Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

PRIVATE BUSINESS

BARRY CORPORATION BILL

WORKINGTON HARBOUR AND DOCK
(TRANSFER)BILL

BRITISH TRANSPORT COMMISSIONBILL

DARTFORD TUNNEL BILL

Lords Amendments considered and agreed to.

ARUNDEL ESTATE BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered.

Standing Order 205 (Notice of Third Reading)suspended; Bill to be read the Third time forthwith.—[The Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

FINSBURY SQUARE BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered.

Standing Order 205 (Notice of Third Reading)suspended; Bill to be read the Third time forthwith.—[The Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means.]

Bill accordingly read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

LIVERPOOL CORPORATION BILL [Lords]

As amended, to be considered upon Wednesday, at Seven o'clock.

LONDON COUNTY COUNCIL (GENERAL POWERS)BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered.

Standing Order 205 (Notice of Third Reading)suspended.—[The Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means.]

(Queen's consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified)Bill read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

MILFORD DOCKS BILL [Lords]

As amended, considered.

Standing Order 205 (Notice of Third Reading)suspended.—[The Deputy-Chairman of Ways and Means.]

(Queen's consent, on behalf of the Crown, signified)Bill read the Third time and passed, with Amendments.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF SUPPLY

Factory, Nancekuke

Mr. Hayman: asked the Minister of Supply whether he will make a statement on redundancies at the Ministry of Supply factory at Nancekuke, Cornwall.

The Minister of Supply (Mr. Aubrey Jones): Forty-eight industrial employees were declared redundant in June. So far only eight have gone. The remaining discharges will be spread over the next two months.

Mr. Hayman: May I ask the Minister to bear in mind that the urban district in which this factory is situated suffered very severely from unemployment in the inter-war years? Will he take this into consideration?

Mr. Jones: Yes, Sir. I am very conscious of that, although it is primarily a consideration for my right hon. Friend the Minister of Labour.

Royal Ordnance Factories

Mr. Healey: asked the Minister of Supply how many workers at the Royal Ordnance factory, Barnbow, will be made redundant in the next three, six and twelve months, respectively.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: I expect some reduction in the level of employment at this factory during the next twelve months, but I cannot at present say when and on what scale redundancy will occur.

Mr. Healey: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that this news will be received with great dismay throughout the area


from which this factory draws workers? Is he further aware that this redundancy culminates 30 per cent. redundancy in the factory over the last three years, and that this would be quite unnecessary if the Minister were prepared to carry out the undertaking to make Royal Ordnance factories a preferred source for the production of conventional armaments?

Mr. Jones: I should have thought that my statement would have been received with the very opposite of dismay. One of the reasons why I cannot at this moment declare what the extent of redundancy will be in this factory is that this factory depends on export orders, and no one can foresee exactly where and when export orders will arise. For the rest, I can only reiterate that it is my policy, which has been faithfully carried out, to make Royal Ordnance factories a preferred source of the arms they are equipped to produce.

Mr. Healey: asked the Minister of Supply to what extent it is his policy that the Royal Ordnance factories should be encouraged to tender for foreign arms contracts.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: I am anxious to ensure that foreign arms contracts shall make as large a contribution as possible to the maintenance of employment at the retained Royal Ordnance factories and the factories will be regarded as a preferred source for foreign arms orders secured by Her Majesty's Government in exactly the same way as Service orders.

Mr. Healey: In that case, can the right hon. Gentleman explain why at the present time a private company is making profits which should be going to the taxpayers by sub-contracting to the Royal Ordnance factory at Barnbow a large part of the Swiss arms order which the Government themselves could easily have obtained several years ago, since the Royal Ordnance factories are capable of producing these tanks at least 20 per cent. cheaper than any private firm?

Mr. Jones: Yes, because it is part of the Swiss convention of neutrality, if not of their neutrality laws, that orders for arms should be placed not with foreign Governments but with firms. In this instance, the order was placed with a firm. The firm placed half the order with the Royal Ordnance factory. I

should have thought that a solution eminently acceptable to the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Healey: Can the right hon. Gentleman give us any details about the money which the firm is making by acting as a middleman between a foreign Government and the Ministry?

Mr. Jones: Had it not been for this firm's acting as a middleman this order would not have been secured by this country at all.

Dr. Stross: asked the Minister of Supply what was the expenditure at Swynnerton Royal Ordnance factory during 1956 on maintenance work; and how many workers outside the factory were employed.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: £645,315. The average number of outside workers employed was 70.

Dr. Stross: Would the Minister give us an assurance that maintenance work, some of which obviously must be continued or the factory will become derelict and not even be saleable, so far as possible will be done by men and women who are working in the factory itself rather than by outside contractors?

Mr. Jones: In so far as it is possible, yes. As a matter of fact, 80 per cent. of the maintenance work now being done is being done by workers internal to the factory.

Dr. Stross: asked the Minister of Supply whether he will give the average age of men and women employees at the Royal Ordnance factory, Swynnerton, and the number who have at any time during their employment suffered from dermatitis or other diseases directly following their employment.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: The average age of the men and women employed at the factory is 49 and 42, respectively. As regards the second part of the Question, full information is not readily available, but 250 cases of dermatitis or other occupational diseases have occurred since 1950.

Dr. Stross: Will the right hon. Gentleman agree that the average age of these men and women is rather high and that this makes it more difficult for them to find alternative employment if and when


they are declared redundant, and that, in addition to that, there is a prejudice against people who have suffered from dermatitis, a prejudice both by their fellow workers and by other employers, and due in part to ignorance? Will the right hon. Gentleman, therefore, give special consideration to those who have so suffered?

Mr. Jones: Yes, these are both difficulties of which I am very conscious and which the Minister of Labour also has in mind.

Dr. Stross: asked the Minister of Supply what compensation is to be paid to workers in Royal Ordnance factory installations when they are declared redundant.

Mr. Swingler: asked the Minister of Supply what compensation will be offered to those workers who are made redundant at Royal Ordnance factories as a result of cuts in the defence programme.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: I would refer the hon. Members to the reply riven to the hon. Member for Newton (Mr. Lee)on 6th June.

Dr. Stross: Has the Minister noted that the amount of compensation appears to be very little compared with the quite rightly generous treatment which has been meted out to Regulars in the Forces who are now to be dispensed with, and that after five years' work the compensation gratuity to these people is five weeks wages? Does he not think it is abominably low?

Mr. Jones: One must not, of course, compare like with unlike. In the Services, one is terminating contracts of service. In the Royal Ordnance factories, one is not terminating contracts of service of established workers. As for the non-established, the rate of gratuity was established only recently under the Superannuation Act, and I do not think the point now being made by the hon. Gentleman was made then.

Mr. Swingler: Would not the Minister reconsider this decision now in the light of the Government's White Paper about compensation to those made redundant in the Armed Forces? Is he not aware that many of the workers in these factories have given long years of service involving considerable danger to their

health, and, in time of warfare, considerable danger to their lives? There are certain comparable factors here. Will he not, therefore, reconsider the whole question?

Mr. Jones: Yes, but surely the relevant question is whether or not the rates of gratuity are comparable to those in comparable industrial organisations. I think that they are.

Mr. Shinwell: Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that the rate of gratuity for redundancy in Royal Ordnance factories is not comparable with the rate of gratuity or compensation in the mining industry?

Mr. Jones: I should not like to answer that without notice, but I have gone into the comparison with the normal industrial firm and, in the normal industrial firm, I do not think there is any very great difference.

Mrs. Slater: asked the Minister of Supply what consideration has been given to the employment of persons on general maintenance work, who would otherwise become redundant at the Royal Ordnance factory, Swynnerton.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: The factory has for some time employed surplus production workers on essential maintenance work and will continue to do so for as long as necessary. Work of this kind will, however, require only limited numbers.

Mrs. Slater: While thanking the Minister for that reply, and the one which he gave to my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent, Central (Dr. Stross)a moment ago, may I ask him again to be very careful to see that as many as possible of these people who will otherwise become redundant are at least found work on mainteance in the factory, especially in view of the difficulty of their obtaining alternative employment in the north Staffordshire area?

Mr. Jones: Yes, and there will, of course, be quite a protracted period of decontamination of this factory that will require the employment of a proportion of the total labour force now employed.

Mr. Swingler: asked the Minister of Supply what consultations he has had with representatives of trade unions since the announcement of the decision to close


the Swynnerton Royal Ordnance factory; and if he will give an assurance that redundancies will not be created until a scheme has been agreed with the trade unions.

Mr. Aubrey Jones: There have been discussions with trade union representatives both at factory level and, within the last few days, with the Ministry of Supply Joint Industrial Council, to which my hon. Friend referred in his reply of 8th July. There is already an agreement on redundancy procedure between my Department and the trade unions.

Mr. Swingler: Will the Minister give a categorical assurance that no scheme will be implemented until an agreement has been reached with the local representatives of the trade unions at the Swynnerton factory?

Mr. Jones: The hon. Gentleman is always asking me for categorical assurances, but in this case there is a redundancy agreement which relates to all the factories. Swynnerton is no exception.

Mr. Robens: Would the right hon. Gentleman tell us what is to be the future finally of the Swynnerton factory?

Mr. Jones: As I indicated a fortnight or so ago, I think it was, I am endeavouring to dispose of all the factories no longer required for defence to industrial firms.

Sir A. V. Harvey: Can my right hon. Friend confirm that the real problem of this factory is that, having been a gunpowder factory, it cannot be turned over to other useful industrial employment? Is not that the real problem?

Mr. Jones: Yes, that is a problem. I think the problem of this factory is that no matter to what purpose it may be devoted it is relatively an uneconomical factory.

Dr. Stross: The Minister has just advised us that he is handing these factories over to other industrial concerns, but does he not remember that at West Kirby it was the local authority which took over the whole of the site and made a great success of it? Would he, therefore, consider approaching the county council and the Stoke City Council to treat this site in a similar way?

Mr. Jones: Gladly.

Oral Answers to Questions — MINISTRY OF HEALTH

Meat Inspectors

Mr. Hayman: asked the Minister of Health to what extent there is a shortage of fully qualified meat inspectors.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Health (Mr. J. K. Vaughan-Morgan): I regret that this information is not available.

Mr. Hayman: Will the Parliamentary Secretary bear in mind that there is much uninspected meat going on the market for human consumption? Does he not consider this very undesirable, and will he do what he can to recruit inspectors?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It is part of the general problem of the shortage of public health inspectors, but if the hon. Gentleman has any particular cases in mind, I must ask him to table a Question to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food.

Mr. Royle: Is not the difficulty accentuated by the Government's slaughterhouse policy, and if there were not such a multiplicity of slaughterhouses would not the situation be very much simpler?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The problem surely is the shortage of public health inspectors.

Mr. Hayman: Might I point out that my Question was originally addressed to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food but was transferred to the hon. Gentleman's Department?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I was referring to detailed cases.

Tuberculosis (Housing)

Mr. Woof: asked the Minister of Health what conclusions he has reached as a result of the replies received from medical officers of health of county borough councils to his letter regarding the Standing Tuberculosis Advisory Committee's suggestion that there are increasing difficulties in rehousing tuberculous families.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: In general, the arrangements for giving priority in rehousing to people with tuberculosis continue to work satisfactorily, but those responsible for recommending priority


are being reminded of the need to supply information about the infectivity of the case.

Mr. Woof: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that local authorities are experiencing considerable difficulty in rehousing T.B. families, and will he consult the Minister of Housing and Local Government with a view to reinstating the subsidy for houses allocated for that purpose?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I can only say that there is very little evidence of such difficulty now.

Dr. Summerskill: Can the hon. Gentleman say why, if there is no evidence, the Standing Tuberculosis Advisory Committee made the suggestion that local authorities are not giving priority, and why it has taken it rather seriously?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It is only fair to say that the Report has not yet been considered by the Central Health Services Council.

Smallpox

Mrs. McLaughlin: asked the Minister of Health how many cases of smallpox have been notified during the first six months of this year.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Two cases were notified in the twenty-six weeks to 29th June, 1957.

Mrs. McLaughlin: asked the Minister of Health if, in view of the recent outbreak of smallpox in the London area, he will consider making vaccination compulsory.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: This would require legislation. Experience of compulsory vaccination before 1948 does not suggest that a higher proportion of the population would be protected against smallpox than under the current voluntary arrangements.

Mrs. Braddock: As smallpox is becoming difficult to diagnose, and in view of the difficulty in a recent case when doctors disagreed, will the hon. Gentleman make certain that the officers of the Ministry have some knowledge of diagnosing smallpox so that the difficulty which has been experienced will not recur?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I will do my best to ensure that my officers comply

with the hon. Lady's requirements, but I do not think I am the best person to teach them how to diagnose smallpox.

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Health what arrangements exist between his Department and the Ministry of Transport and Civil Aviation in respect of the medical examination and detection of smallpox and other infectious or contagious diseases among passengers to this country from Africa, India and elsewhere.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I assume this relates to air traffic. It is a joint responsibility to arrange for health control at State-owned airports. This gives wide powers for dealing with any case or suspected case of communicable disease arriving in this country, including medical examination and surveillance of passengers where necessary. The scheme is operated by local authorities through airport medical officers.

Mr. Sorensen: Is the Minister aware that I was not referring exclusively to air transport but to all kinds of overseas transport? Can he say why it is that a passenger did arrive with smallpox and was undetected either on disembarkation or in transit?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I suppose the answer is the troubles of diagnosis to which the hon. Member for Liverpool, Exchange (Mrs. Braddock)referred earlier.

Doctors (Emigration)

Dr. D. Johnson: asked the Minister of Health if he is aware of the number of qualified doctors who are emigrating to appointments in the Commonwealth and the United States of America owing to not being able to find employment in the National Health Service and if he will make an inquiry into this situation.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It is no new thing for some doctors from this country to take appointments overseas. Figures of the number doing so are not available, but I will willingly consider any further statistics which my hon. Friend can produce. The report of the Committee which has been inquiring into future requirements for doctors and medical students is expected shortly.

Dr. Johnson: I am not at the moment able to produce statistics, but might I


none the less ask my hon. Friend to take careful note of what is undoubtedly a drift overseas, including to the United States, on the part of many of our more competent doctors? Might I inform him of at least one case of a very well trained and experienced doctor who returned from overseas, was unable to find a place in the National Health Service after searching for a year or eighteen months, and has now obtained a very excellent appointment in the United States in his specialty as a pediatrician, a post he was unable to obtain here?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I note my hon. Friend's remarks.

Dr. Summerskill: Would the hon. Gentleman say that, whatever health scheme was in operation today, the supply of doctors would still exceed the demand?

Mr. B. Harrison: As large numbers of doctors are coming here from the Commonwealth, will my hon. Friend do absolutely nothing to stop this exchange, which is of mutual advantage?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend's remarks.

Mr. Grimond: If the Parliamentary Secretary is satisfied that there is a real surplus of doctors, will he draw the attention of the Secretary of State for Scotland to the fact that there are certain islands in my constituency which are without doctors?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I have not spoken in quite such categorical terms. What I said was that the Report is expected shortly.

Artificial Limbs (Improvements)

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Health if he will state the date of the establishment of his Department of Research and Experiment for the improvement of artificial limbs and appurtenances, and list the major improvements approved for general issue to limbless persons since that date; when the last report was issued by his Standing Advisory Committee on Artificial Limbs; and when the next report may be expected.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I understand that a medical officer for research was first appointed in 1945. The Standing Advisory Committee ceased making

formal reports after 1951, but I am considering the form in which information about developments might be published in future. It will take a little time to prepare the list which the hon. Member has asked for and I will send it to him as soon as possible.

Mr. Simmons: The Minister states that this was started in 1945, but that was long before the merger. My purpose is to find out what his Ministry has done for the limbless disabled since he has been in control. Why was the practice of issuing the report of the Standing Advisory Committee on Artificial Limbs discontinued? Surely disabled men have the right to know what is being done on their behalf? That Report gave them that information.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I understand that, as far as can be ascertained, this was discontinued because the information was already available in other forms. I take it that the hon. Member is interested in this matter from the point of view of B.L.E.S.M.A., from whom I recently saw a delegation. I have promised to write to them about the points that they raised, and I hope to be able to make better arrangements for giving them information about research developments.

Mr. Simmons: I am interested not only in connection with B.L.E.S.M.A. but with all limbless people, whether they are ex-Service men or civilians. I hope that the Minister will realise that.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: If there are any other bodies whom the hon. Member thinks I should notify, I will do so.

Motor Cars and Tricycles

Mr. Simmons: asked the Minister of Health if he will state the average cost, excluding Purchase Tax, of the four-seater cars issued free to extremely disabled ex-Service war pensioners, and the cost of the latest coach-built single-seater motor invalid tricycles issued by his Department; and whether he contemplates converting the latter to two-seater vehicles.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It is contrary to Government policy to disclose the prices at which Government contracts are awarded. I have re-examined the possibility of providing two-seater tricycles in place of single-seaters, but the conclusion


I have regretfully come to is that this is not a development which I can reasonably contemplate.

Mr. Simmons: Surely the Minister knows that we cannot get a fair appraisal of what would be the cost of the invalid tricycles as compared with the cost of a car if he cannot give us the figures. Can he give us some idea of the cost of turning a tricycle into a two-seater car as compared with the already available four-seater car? Why should a disabled man be compelled to go out on his own every time? These people who use tricycles are badly disabled, and if they want to go out with their wives the wives have to travel either by tram or bus and the husbands have to meet them at the other end. It is not fair. Cannot the Minister do something about it?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I cannot quite remember the beginning of the hon. Member's supplementary, but I can assure him that I have tried to look at this matter very sympathetically. There are a great many difficulties in the way. I think that he asked me one question, to which the answer is that the additional cost of a two-seater would be about£25.

Sir J. Smyth: Does not my hon. Friend agree that the last people who should be allowed to travel alone are the badly disabled? Will not he examine the possibility of converting for that purpose the little three-wheeled, two-seater car, so many of which we see on the roads today?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I have looked into that proposal, but I am advised that from a technical point of view it has not so far proved feasible.

Mrs. Jeger: Will the Minister try to look at this matter from the point of view not only of disabled men but their wives? In very many cases those wives have a difficult time enough. Could not the Minister try to encourage some scheme which would make it possible for the wives to share in these outgoings and make the whole family a little happier in a very difficult situation?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I hope that I have given this matter sympathetic consideration. It has been before the House on many occasions. There still remain the outstanding difficulties to which I have referred.

Elderly Persons (Accommodation)

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Minister of Health whether he will discuss with local authorities the need for special financial assistance to enable them to provide accommodation for the care of senile and elderly confused persons.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: If the hon. Member has in mind the reference in paragraph 628 of the Report of the Royal Commission on Mental Health, my right hon. Friend will be discussing with representatives of the local authorities all the recommendations in that Report which affect them, when he has received their comments on those recommendations.

Mr. Bleakinsop: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that there are some local authorities anxious to make a start with this work? Is he aware that this would relieve hospitals of many cases which are at present in their care and that there would be a great financial advantage, but that they need some financial advice?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: This raises a wide issue which we must consider when we have had the opinions of local authorities.

Mr. Ronald Bell: Does not my hon. Friend feel that this matter might be better settled through the usual channels?

Oral Answers to Questions — HOSPITALS

Mental Hospitals (Patients)

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Minister of Health if he will implement the recommendation of the Royal Commission on the Law relating to Mental Illness and Mental Deficiency that patients' letters shall no longer be subjected to censorship.

Mr. Leavey: asked the Minister of Health what action he proposes to take on the recommendation of the Royal Commission on Mental Health that the outgoing letters from patients in mental and mental deficiency hospitals should be despatched unopened.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Superintendents are required by statute to forward unopened all letters addressed by patients to certain specified persons and bodies


and may at their discretion forward other letters. The recommendation of the Royal Commission on this subject will be considered with others which involve legislation. Meanwhile, I am having a letter sent to superintendents suggesting that in view of the Commission's recommendations where this is not already being done, they should exercise their statutory discretion to open outgoing letters of patients only where they have cause to think that the contents might be offensive to the recipients.

Mr. Robinson: In congratulating the hon. Gentleman upon virtually terminating this undesirable practice, may I now ask him to press ahead with some of the other recommendations in the Royal Commission's Report which do not require legislation?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: With regard to the second part of the hon. Gentleman's supplementary question, I will certainly do my best. With regard to the first part, I do not think I ought to mislead the House into thinking that this is a very important step forward. The statutory right of censorship must remain with the superintendent, but I felt that what I have announced might be a little token of how we were trying to press on.

Mr. Sorensen: asked the Minister of Health how many applications for discharge by or on behalf of certified mentally ill and mentally deficient patients were received and how many were rejected during 1956; and how many were discharged but subsequently returned to hospitals.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I regret that this information is not available.

Mr. Sorensen: Surely the hon. Member should take steps to acquire this information, particularly in view of the statement made that large numbers of people who apply for discharge are not given it and others who ought to be outside mental hospitals are inside. Surely the information for which I have asked would be extremely helpful in this connection.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I have looked into the matter. It is rather difficult to know in what form this information could be recorded. I do not think that we want to create too much of a complicated

central register. I fully appreciate the hon. Member's point, but I think that the best thing to do is to continue to look at individual cases.

Dr. Summerskill: Although the statistics regarding the first part of my hon. Friend's Question might be difficult to obtain, the second part of the Question is very important, and that would provide a guide to the efficacy of certain new therapeutic measures.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: As a result of the Report of the Royal Commission the whole question of statistics will be looked at again. If I may go rather away from the narrower point, I would point out that the difficulty that we are in is that we do not want to change too often the basis upon which statistics are called for, and any final form must await legislation.

Mr. Doughty: In view of the hon. Member's suggestion that people are detained in mental hospitals who are better outside, and also in view of the fact that there is a great shortage of vacancies in these hospitals, can my hon. Friend assure us that nobody is detained who can possibly be released?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: This is hardly the moment to raise again the whole Report of the Royal Commission.

Mr. Sorensen: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that I made no suggestion that large numbers of patients were inside who should be outside? I said that that was the impression. Could not the Minister at least obtain certain sample statistics from half a dozen prominent mental hospitals?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I will certainly consider that suggestion.

Welwyn Garden City Hospital

Lord Balniel: asked the Minister of Health how many working drawings for the Welwyn Garden City Hospital have been received by his Department; what proportion these form of the total number needed; and how many have been approved.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: No working drawings have yet been submitted formally by the board for approval. I have, however, made informal arrangements for examining the drawings in


batches as they are prepared for the Board. Some 50, about 9 per cent, of the total, were received on 11th July and are being examined. This should facilitate speedy approval when drawings are formally submitted with bills of quantities.

Lord Balniel: asked the Minister of Health whether building work on the Welwyn Garden City Hospital will commence immediately after the completion of the site work which is now in progress.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: This must depend on the speed with which working drawings and bills of quantities can be prepared and whether satisfactory tenders are obtained, but even in the most favourable circumstances there may well be a short interval. There will be no avoidable delay.

Lord Balniel: In view of the delay which has occurred in building the hospital, does my hon. Friend appreciate that any substantial delay between the completion of site work and the beginning of building works would create a most unfortunate impression, and will he do his utmost to ensure that it is kept to the absolute minimum?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Yes, indeed, Sir.

Downs Hospital, Belmont

Mr. Sharples: asked the Minister of Health when he expects to be able to give permission for work to be undertaken in connection with the conversion of part of Downs Hospital, Belmont, in order to provide additional accommodation for the chronic sick in the Sutton and Cheam area.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The London County Council, who occupy the buildings concerned, hopes to release them by the end of the year. As soon as this has been done, and subject to completion of negotiations for transfer, it should be possible to begin the work.

Mr. Sharples: Is my hon. Friend aware that it is now hoped that these buildings will be released by October? Is he aware that there is a very acute shortage of accommodation of this type in the area, and can he give an assurance that work will not be held up by administrative difficulties in his Department?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: As far as I can see, I can give that assurance. The scheme for conversion for chronic sick accommodation has not yet been finally approved, but by the time possession of the property is obtained I think that will be well under way.

Consultants

Mr. K. Robinson: asked the Minister of Health the number of consultants per 100,000 population in the four metropolitan regions taken together, and in the rest of England and Wales.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: 18·7 and 12·7.

Mr. Robinson: Do not those figures suggest that there is a very serious shortage of consultants in provincial areas? As there are many hundreds of senior trained registrars awaiting consultant appointments, will the hon. Gentleman consider authorising a considerable increase in consultative appointments in the provinces?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The disparity in the figures is not quite as great as is suggested. Expressed as whole-time equivalents, the figures are 13·95 in London and 10·51 in the rest of the country. There is a complication which slightly confuses the issue in the rather higher ratio of teaching to non-teaching beds in the Metropolitan area.

Mr. Blonkinsop: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that in the North-Eastern Region, the Newcastle Regional Hospital Board is saying that his own Ministry is preventing appointments to consultant posts which it wants to make?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The hon. Gentleman has raised that matter in another way.

Administration and Staff

Mr. Randall: asked the Minister of Health if he has considered Sir Noel Hall's report on his official investigation into the existing hospital administration and clerical grading structure; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I have not yet received the report but expect to have it before long.

Mr. Randall: This is a matter which arises from the Guillebaud Report. Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware that the


administrative and clerical staffs of the hospitals are anxious about the delay in this matter, which means much to them? Will he do his best to see that the report is available as early as possible?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I will certainly do what lies within my power. The report will be referred to the administrative and clerical Whitley Council as soon as possible.

Mr. Robinson: Can the hon. Gentleman give an assurance that the report will be published?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: No, I am afraid that I cannot.

Designations

Mr. Grimond: asked the Minister of Health if he will draw the attention of the hospital boards to the undesirability of describing hospitals as hospital and home for incurables.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: This is a matter for the hospital authorities themselves, but so far as I am aware the word "incurable" does not now appear in the name of any National Health Service hospital.

Mr. Grimond: While appreciating that this is a matter for the hospital authorities, it appears that certain well-known hospitals still have such names which can have very unfortunate psychological results.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Which homes does the hon. Gentleman have in mind? There are four of which I know, but all are outside the National Health Service.

Nurses, Windsor and Manchester

Mr. Ronald Bell: asked the Minister of Health whether he is aware of the shortage of nurses in the area of the Windsor Group Hospital Management Committee; and what steps are being taken to deal with it.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Yes, Sir. The shortage at 31st March last was about 13 per cent. of the approved establishment. The hospital management committee is advertising locally for nursing staff.

Mr. W. R. Williams: asked the Minister of Health what action he proposes to take to bring the nursing staff

in hospitals under the control of the Manchester Regional Hospital Board up to the authorised establishment.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Energetic measures are being taken by the board and the nursing appointments offices of the Ministry of Labour and National Service to publicise the need for nurses and the attractions of a nursing career. These measures include visits of the mobile nursing exhibition, displays of the mental health exhibition and talks on nursing to senior pupils at schools and to adult organisations.

Mr. Williams: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that valuable information, but is he aware that within a radius of 12 miles of the centre of Manchester there is a population of more than 2¼million? Does he not agree that a shortage of more than 800 in nursing staff in a highly industrialised area such as this is sufficiently serious to warrant his personal attention, and will he give that?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It is probably the factor of population which has led the regional hospital board to arrange for the nursing exhibition to tour the Manchester area this year. The exhibition visited seven towns in May and is touring eight further towns in September and October.

Dr. Summerskill: Besides advertising the advantages of nursing, will the hon. Gentleman make a special effort to examine conditions and accommodation in which these women work? It may then be discovered why girls in this area are not attracted to the profession.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I will certainly draw the attention of the regional hospital board to that.

Mr. W. Griffiths: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that the matrons of two hospitals in Manchester, Crumpsall Hospital and Withington Hospital, have been instructed not to recruit more nurses because the board is not in a position to meet their salaries? What does he say about that?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Even if it is true, which I do not know, against that should be set the fact that the board's nursing staff increased in the last year by 344.

Mr. Williams: May I press the hon. Gentleman on this matter, which is regarded with great concern in Manchester? Will he examine it again, because in Manchester it is believed that inadequate finances have been directly responsible for the shortage of nursing staff?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: As I said in reply to a Question last week, the financial allocation is sufficient to maintain services at the level of last year and to provide for a measure of development and improvement. It is for the board to assess its priorities—this among others.

Winterton Hospital

Mr. Slater: asked the Minister of Health what is the decrease in the number of patients in the Winterton Hospital as a result of the Sedgefield Isolation Hospital being transferred to the former hospital management committee, partly in October, 1956, and wholly in April, 1957.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: None, since admission of mental patients to the former isolation hospital has not yet begun.

Mr. Slater: Can the hon. Gentleman confirm reports, circulated in the area at the time when the regional hospital board decided to transfer the hospital to the mental hospital management committee, that all the accommodation in the isolation hosiptal had been taken by the Winterton Hospital Management Committee for patients from that hospital?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Admissions will begin in a week or two. The hospital is to be used for patients suffering from mental instability due to old age.

Mr. Slater: asked the Minister of Health the numbers of admissions and discharges at the Winterton Hospital in 1954, 1955 and 1956.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: For the three years admissions and discharges (including deaths)were respectively 767 and 774; 950 and 966; and 1,201 and 1,242.

Mr. Slater: Can the hon. Gentleman say how many patients being transferred to voluntary status are included in the figures for admissions, and whether the discharging of those patients—without their actually leaving the hospital—has

been included in the number of discharges?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Not without a lot of notice.

Mr. Chetwynd: Can the hon. Gentleman say why there is a very large increase in the numbers?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It is due to the extra voluntary admissions that there has been a big increase in the last two years.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Can the hon. Gentleman say whether the picture for this hospital is very different from that for other hospitals?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It is clear from the figures that there has been a surge in voluntary admissions to the hospital in the last two years.

Sedgefield General Hospital

Mr. Slater: asked the Minister of Health the number on the waiting list at the Sedgefield General Hospital to date.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: 279 on 31st May.

Mr. Slater: According to reports, there is every possibility of another ward being taken from the general hospital to provide accommodation for a new specialist service for maternity cases. If that happens, as the management committee has already given accommodation to the Stockton and Middlesbrough area for maternity cases, will not the number of people waiting for admission increase tremendously, and will not the Hardwick Hall Maternity Hospital be closed down?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I cannot claim the hon. Gentleman's knowledge of local conditions, but the points which he has mentioned will have to be considered by the regional board. The main and salient factor is that the waiting list has declined considerably over the last few years.

Mr. Chetwynd: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that this hospital serves a very large and heavily populated area, mainly of an industrial area, and that further hospital accommodation in the region is needed, especially for industrial and maternity cases?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I know something of the problems of the area from a recent visit.

Maternity Beds

Mrs. Slater: asked the Minister of Health what number of maternity beds are provided under the National Health Service in Manchester, Salford, Sheffield, Birmingham, Bournemouth, Eastbourne, and Stoke-on-Trent, respectively.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The numbers of staffed beds allocated for this purpose on 31st December last at hospitals in the groups serving these towns were, 478, 78, 281, 583, 99, 41 and 157, respectively.

Mrs. Slater: Does the Parliamentary Secretary realise that in an area like Stoke-on-Trent, which has a very small number of beds as compared with Birmingham, there is a very real need for a greater number of maternity beds, due to the fact that in the city almost the only cases which can gain admission are those cases where the woman is having her first baby or those which are real emergency cases? Is he aware that many of these women are living in overcrowded conditions, which create a social problem? Can he do anything about it?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The planning of the maternity services is a matter for the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board. As to the relative numbers of beds available in Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent, I have examined the figures, and I do not think that the hon. Member's statement is borne out. In addition, in connection with figures for various local authority areas, we have to remember that many hospitals serve wider areas, so that it is very difficult to make a fair comparison.

Mrs. Slater: That is not a large number, but in view of the comparatively small number of ordinary beds—apart from the pay-beds—and the fact that hospitals in the No. 21 Group serve a very much larger area than Stoke-on-Trent, as the Parliamentary Secretary has stated, cannot he ask that there should be further consideration of the whole question of the provision of maternity beds?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: The figure given is a little misleading because the demand for maternity pay-beds is very small. In practice, it works out as equivalent to the full-time use of only five

beds. I am assured that no application for maternity beds which is based on medical grounds is refused.

Pay-beds, Stoke-on-Trent

Mrs. Slater: asked the Minister of Health how many pay-beds there are for maternity cases in Stoke-on-Trent No. 21 Hospital Group.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: Fifteen.

Regional Hospital Board (Wessex)

Mr. Denzil Freeth: asked the Minister of Health whether he is yet in a position to make a statement on the proposal he has received from the South West Metropolitan Regional Hospital Board for the creation of a separate Regional Board for Wessex.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I am not yet in a position to announce a decision. I must remind my hon. Friend that before making an order creating a new region, it is incumbent on my right hon. Friend by statute to consult the various bodies which seem to be affected, A firm decision will however be announced as soon as possible.

Mr. Freeth: Has my hon. Friend consulted the necessary bodies? Am I right in assuming from his reply that he is favourable to the setting up of a separate Wessex Regional Board, and are we in Wessex to take this as being a nod which is as good as a wink?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: I have nothing to add to my very carefully worded answer. Regarding the last part of my hon. Friend's supplementary question, I can think of many occasions when a nod causes less embarrassment than a wink.

Mr. Smithers: Will my hon. Friend take note that if he is able to come to the conclusion that he should set up a separate regional board, it will be very well received in the Winchester area?

Day Hospitals (Mental Patients)

Mr. Blenkinsop: asked the Minister of Health whether he will give support from central funds for the development of further day hospitals for the treatment of mental patients.

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It is for hospital boards to decide on the priority of


this development compared with others falling to be paid for out of the funds allocated to them.

Mr. Blenkinsop: Is the Parliamentary Secretary aware of the valuable work being done by some of these day hospitals? Does not he feel that some encouragement should be given to them?

Mr. Vaughan-Morgan: It is a most interesting development which we are watching very carefully.

Oral Answers to Questions — EGYPT

British Subjects (Currency)

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many British subjects who left Egypt since 1st November, 1956, and were in possession of certificates from Her Majesty's Consul at Port Said have had the Egyptian currency they brought with them exchanged for sterling at par; and what was the amount involved.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Ian Harvey): Eighty-six British subjects holding Consular certificates have had their currency exchanged; the amount involved was£63,664 10s.

Mr. E. Johnson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs how many British subjects who left Egypt since 1st November, 1956, without a certificate from Her Majesty's Consul at Port Said, have applied to his Department to exchange the Egyptian currency they brought with them for sterling at par and have had their applications refused; and what was the amount involved.

Mr. Ian Harvey: Eighteen written applications have been refused on the grounds that the applicants did not hold Consular certificates; the amount involved totalled£13,895. In addition to these written applications, about a dozen personal inquiries have been received, but the amount of currency involved in these cases is not known.

Mr. Johnson: In view of the very small sum involved, does not my hon. Friend think it would be a generous act to allow those people who have not these certificates to exchange their currency in the same way? Is it not rather unfair that

they should be penalised because the machinery for issuing the certificates had not been set up at the time they left?

Mr. Harvey: The position is a little different. The concession with regard to the certificates was granted because there was a widespread impression that a promise had been given that people who held Consular certificates would have their currency exchanged at par. People who did not hold certificates cannot claim that they were so misled.

Former British Officials

Mr. G. Nicholson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement regarding the claims against the Egyptian Government by the former British officials who were dismissed in 1951.

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd): The former British officials of the Egyptian Government who were dismissed in 1951 have made claims against the Egyptian Government for breach of contract, loss of career and vexatious dismissal. During the negotiations for the 1954 Agreement with Egypt, Her Majesty's Government obtained from the Egyptian Government an undertaking to set up a Commission to deal with these claims. The Commission was set up and claims were submitted to it, but no awards had been announced up to the time when relations between the two countries were disturbed by the Egyptian nationalisation of the Suez Canal Company in July, 1956.
Her Majesty's Government undertook, in April of this year to help ex-officials suffering hardship through the nonpayment of their claims. The Anglo-Egyptian Re-settlement Board has been dealing with such cases of hardship as have been put to it. The Government have also agreed to present the claims of these officials to the Egyptian Government at the same time as a settlement of other claims is sought. We have undertaken to do everything we can to ensure that the Egyptian Government discharge their acknowledged obligation to compensate these ex-officials.

Mr. Nicholson: Would not my right hon. and learned Friend agree that this class of claimant is in a special position and that the matter has been hanging over them for a very long time? I know that


my right hon. and learned Friend is favourably disposed towards them; can he not accelerate the settlement of this just claim which was made six years ago? Is he not aware that because of their peculiar position these people should be given priority over any other claimants?

Mr. Lloyd: I am very conscious of the facts to which my hon. Friend has referred. It was with those facts in mind that we obtained a broadening of the definition of "hardship" in the Anglo-Egyptian settlement.
If there is any case of hardship which my hon. Friend wishes to bring to my attention, it will be referred to the Resettlement Board and it will be dealt with by that Board.

Oral Answers to Questions — HUMAN RIGHTS (CONVENTION)

Mr. Brockway: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if Her Majesty's Government have ratified the Convention for the protection of human rights adopted by the Council for Europe, including the provisions permitting individuals to petition the European Court of Human Rights and accepting judgment by compulsory jurisdiction by the Court.

Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: The Convention was ratified by Her Majesty's Government on 22nd February, 1951, but Her Majesty's Government have not made the optional declaration accepting the competence of the European Commission of Human Rights to receive petitions from individuals, nor that recognising the compulsory jurisdiction of the proposed European Court of Human Rights.

Mr. Brockway: Does not the right hon. and learned Gentleman consider that this Court would be of value in difficult cases arising between individuals and Governments? For example, might it not be of great value at this moment for the French Government in the case of Algeria and for the British Government in cases like that of Cyprus?

Mr. Lloyd: The position which Her Majesty's Government have continuously taken up is that they do not recognise the right of individual petition, because they take the view that States are the proper subject of international law and

if individuals are given rights under international treaties effect should be given to those rights through the national law of the States concerned. The reason why we do not accept the idea of the compulsory jurisdiction of a European Court is that it would mean that British codes of common and statute law would be subject to review by an international Court. For many years it has been the position of successive British Governments that we should not accept that status.

Mr. Paget: How does the right hon. and learned Gentleman fit in the admirable principles which he has just enunciated with the war crimes trials?

Mr. Lloyd: That is another matter.

Oral Answers to Questions — SUEZ OPERATION (DOCUMENTS)

Mr. Hamilton: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs which documents, not open to public inspection, have been made available to certain writers on the history of the Suez operation; and whether he will now make such documents freely available for public inspection.

Mr. Selwyn Lloyd: The answer to the first part of the Question is, "None, Sir." The second part of the Question does not arise.

Mr. Hamilton: Is the right hon. and learned Gentleman aware that he himself attended the introduction of a book by Mr. John Connell which was, in the words of the Manchester Guardian, a "heavy- breathing apologia" for the Government's Suez fiasco? Mr. John Connell asserts that he had available to him documents not open to public inspection. Is the Minister now saying that Mr. John Connell is not speaking the truth when he says that, or is the right hon. and learned Gentleman not speaking the truth when he says that those documents were not available to Mr. John Connell?

Mr. Lloyd: I do not know what private documents of one sort or another Mr. Connell had access to, but I do know that he certainly had no access to any Foreign Office papers.

Oral Answers to Questions — BRITISH EMBASSY, PARIS (MR. W. HALL)

Mr. Teeling: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs why Mr. W. Hall, aged 59, who was allowed to give up a secure post of many years standing in the British Embassy in Paris in June, 1956, and take a transfer to Nice, at a time when it must have been known that the Nice Consulate was to be closed in January, 1957, has not been transferred to some other post: and what steps he is taking to assist him and his family since he cannot obtain a French worker's card, is not entitled to the French dole, and cannot obtain any benefits from the Service Sociale.

Mr. Ian Harvey: Mr. Hall's transfer to Nice, which was made in response to his own request, was approved in April. 1956, although it took effect only in June, 1956. The special review of staff at Foreign Service posts in France was instituted in May, 1956, and the decision to close the Consulate-General at Nice was not taken until some months later. Termination of temporary appointments is bound in many cases to cause hardship; and it was to mitigate this hardship in the case of Mr. Hall that, exceptionally, his service in Paris, which was terminated by voluntary transfer, was taken into account in calculating his terminal gratuity. Her Majesty's Embassy in Paris are in touch with Mr. Hall and will bear him in mind for any suitable vacancy which may arise in Paris or at a Consular post in France.

Mr. Teeling: Does my hon. Friend realise that Mr. Hall will be grateful for part of that reply? Does not he think that the Ambassador or the Embassy in Paris must have known in May that there was a possibility of this and, in view of his good service in Paris, they might have warned Mr. Hall? Does not the hon. Gentleman think that a little more human help might be given to people in this position, as at the present time there is a case coming on in which we are being sued for not giving enough?

Mr. Harvey: My right hon. and learned Friend is well aware of this problem at Nice. Regarding the point in the supplementary question about the Embassy in Paris, I do not think any presumption could be made at that point about what adjustments there would be, and, under

the circumstances, I do not think that the Ambassador can be held to blame in any way.

MUSCAT AND OMAN

Captain Corfield: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on what date the Sultan of Oman and Muscat first intimated to the resident British representative a desire for British military assistance in dealing with the present insurrection.

Mr. A. Henderson: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he will make a statement on the present situation in Central Oman.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs if he will give a summary of the text of the leaflets dropped at Oman.

Mr. Walter Elliot: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs whether he has any further statement to make on developments in Oman.

Mr. Grimond: asked the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs what are the reasons given by the rebels for the revolt in Muscat and Oman.

The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs (Mr. Selwyn Lloyd): With your permission, Mr. Speaker, I will now answer Questions Nos. 58, 65, 66, 69 and 73 together.
It may be useful if I first give the House some more particulars of the background to the present situation in Muscat and Oman.
The Sultanate of Muscat and Oman is an independent sovereign State. In 1913, a religious dignitary known as the Imam led a revolt of some of the tribes in the interior, but in 1920 an agreement was reached at a place called Sib, under which the tribes were given some autonomy, but the sovereignty of the Sultan was recognised throughout the Sultanate.
This agreement was broken by the tribes in the year or two prior to December, 1955, when the new Imam, with foreign help, sought to establish a separate principality. In December, 1955, the Sultan took steps to reassert his authority and forces under his control


entered the main inhabited centres of Oman, meeting no resistance. The former Imam was allowed by the Sultan to live in his village against a guarantee of his good behaviour from a local sheikh. His brother Talib escaped to Saudi Arabia and thence to Cairo.
Since that time an "Oman Imamate" office has been established in Cairo while Cairo Radio disseminates pro-Imam propaganda.
A month or two ago there was trouble with one tribal leader. The Sultan dealt with this successfully and the leader concerned surrendered on 14th June. On that same date, however, Talib, the brother of the ex-Imam, is believed to have landed again in Muscat.
About the same time, a quantity of arms, including light machine guns and anti-tank mines, was also landed. Talib set himself up in the mountain area north-west of Nizwa and attracted to himself about 200 followers. He then occupied certain villages, some of which had fortifications.
Loyal tribes sent to deal with Talib were unable to cope with the automatic weapons and the land mines, and Talib's followers were able to inflict a reverse on the Sultan's forces backing the loyal tribes. This enabled Talib to persuade other local tribesmen to defect. In the primitive tribal society of the region, without some active reaction from the Sultan or his friends, there was always the possibility that disaffection might spread from tribe to tribe.
It was in these circumstances that on the evening of 16th July the Sultan sent an appeal to Her Majesty's Government in the form of a letter to Her Majesty's Consul-General in Muscat.
The terms of the Sultan's letter were as follow:
You have full knowledge of the situation which has now developed at Nizwa and I feel the time has now come when I must request the maximum military and air support which our friend Her Britannic Majesty's Government can give in these circumstances, as on those past occasions which have so cemented our friendship and for which I bear lasting gratitude. I shall be most deeply grateful if such assistance can be given again to restore the position and to prevent further loss of ground and loss of confidence.
Events are now moving so fast that I need hardly add that the speed with which support

can be given will be vital to its value, and I shall be very grateful if you will take up the matter with Her Britannic Majesty's Government accordingly.
The decision of Her Majesty's Government to give help to the Sultan was made for two reasons. First, it was at the request of a friendly ruler who had always relied on us to help him resist aggression or subversion. Secondly, there is the direct British interest involved and I have no need to stress to the House the importance of the Persian Gulf.
In the Gulf, we have certain formal and implicit obligations to the rulers of shaikhdoms under our protection to protect them against attack. This is generally understood throughout the area and it has always been assumed that Her Majesty's Government would honour her obligations.
The difference between a formal obligation and the obligations of a longstanding relationship of friendship is not readily apparent to the local Rulers and people. If we were to fail in one area it would begin to be assumed elsewhere that perhaps the anti-British propaganda of our enemies had some basis to it and that Her Majesty's Government were no longer willing or able to help their friends.
The present position is that Royal Air Force aircraft have taken limited action after due warning against certain military targets, namely, forts in the dissident area. They have also dropped leaflets on behalf of the Sultan and I am arranging for a summary of the contents of these to be circulated in the OFFICIAL REPORT.
No United Kingdom ground forces have been engaged in operations but, as a precaution, our troops in the Persian Gulf area have been reinforced from Kenya and a detachment of the Cameronians is at Buraimi.
The Political Resident has reported that the rebellion has only small active tribal backing. The military operations are on a small scale. Casualties in the conflicts between the Sultan's forces and the rebels have been very small indeed. There have been no casualties to British forces reported.

Mr. Biggs-Davison: Will my right hon. and learned Friend take advantage of the presence of Mr. Dulles in this country to make plain, as my right hon. and learned


Friend has done to the House in his admirable statement, the vital importance which this country attaches to the rights, interests and security of our friends in the Arabian Peninsula as well as to our own national interests in the area?

Mr. Lloyd: In reply to an Oral Question on the Order Paper which has not been reached, I have dealt with the matter of consultation with the United States Government. I have no doubt that the matter will come up between Mr. Dulles and myself.

Mr. A. Henderson: Has the attention of the right hon. and learned Gentleman been drawn to the report in The Times this morning from that newspaper's correspondent, to the effect that there is no evidence to suggest that the Government of Egypt or the Government of Saudi Arabia have directly inspired this uprising? If so, is that the view of Her Majesty's Government?

Mr. Lloyd: I have been very careful not to make allegations against specific Governments. What is quite evident is that these anti-tank guns and machine guns were not produced in Central Oman itself.

Mr. Walter Elliot: Will my right hon. and learned Friend take note that, according to his statement, a detachment of the Cameronians has moved to the Buraimi Oasis and that action on behalf of a friendly sovereign will receive the vigorous support of the vast majority of hon. Members and, I believe, of the people of this country?

Mr. Grimond: Would not the Foreign Secretary agree that in the position today it is not quite sufficient to have informal arrangements with the sheikhs and that the argument that we have been doing this sort of thing before is not a complete justification for doing it in today's circumstances? Did we not have a little misunderstanding or something of that sort over the Sheikh of Muhammareh, which ended in that gentleman losing his head? Would it not be as well if we tried to formalise our relationships with these sheikhs and so make it clear to the world where we stand?

Mr. Lloyd: That is a point to be borne in mind. If the hon. Gentleman has any question about the particular

sheikh he mentioned, I shall be glad to consider it.

Mr. Doughty: Does my right hon. and learned Friend agree with the report in The Times this morning, and with the concluding statement from Sir Bernard Burrows, that
…one factor he wishes to emphasise is that the scope of the whole affair has been greatly exaggerated"?

Mr. Lloyd: I believe that that is true, except that there is a point of principle here which, I believe, is very important.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: The right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to a religious dignitary being involved. Does he mean the Iraq Petroleum Company? Why did he not say something about the Iraq Petroleum Company in his long exposition of affairs? Is he aware that the satisfaction of the right hon. Member for Kelvingrove (Mr. Elliot)that the Cameronians are to be sent to the Burami Oasis will not be shared by a large number of people in Scotland, or by the Cameronians?
Will the Minister consider issuing special leaflets to the Cameronians, telling them why they are there, and have those leaflets illustrated with photographs of the directors of the Iraq Petroleum Company?

Mr. Lloyd: I do not believe the Cameronians would accept the hon. Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes)as their spokesman.

Mr. Walter Elliot: Is my right hon. and learned Friend also aware that the Iraq Petroleum Company is exactly the sort of organisation that is supported by hon. Members opposite, since it is an international company in which the Americans have a considerable share?

Mr. Younger: Am I right in recollecting that the Foreign Secretary said that our agreement with the Sultan was to help in the event of either aggression or subversion——

Mr. Lloyd: indicated dissent.

Mr. Younger: I think that those were the words used in the statement.

Mr. Lloyd: indicated dissent.

Mr. Younger: Whether that is so or not, perhaps the right hon. and learned Gentleman will answer. Am I right in gathering from his statement that the evidence of foreign intervention does not extend to any action by foreign troops, but only to arms coming from an unknown source? If so, will the Foreign Secretary tell us what situation in that area will bring British military intervention to an end, as there seem to be no foreign troops to repulse?

Mr. Lloyd: On the question about subversion, as I have said on a number of occasions, there is no treaty obligation to go to the assistance of the Sultan to resist subversion. There is a treaty of friendship between us, but we have no specific treaty obligation to take the action we have taken and I have not attempted to suggest to the House that there is.
As for the question of conditions which would bring these hostilities to an end, I think that that situation will arise when the tribal loyalties are restored to the position in which they were in 1955. That is at least as much a political as a military operation. It is our wish that the military side of it should be confined within as narrow limits as possible.

Mr. Younger: I am getting a little confused with the Foreign Secretary's explanation. Will he repeat the words, used in his statement, "either aggression or subversion"? I am sure that they occurred in the statement.

Mr. Lloyd: I will certainly have a word with the right hon. Member afterwards. I do not think that I used the words "either subversion or aggression"

Major Legge-Bourke: Will my right hon. and learned Friend make clear that appropriate action, whether naval or otherwise, is being taken to prevent the smuggling in of any more arms?

Mr. Lloyd: Certainly, it is one of our primary purposes to see that the routes in are sealed off.

Mr. Gaitskell: If the achievement of a more satisfactory long-run settlement is a political matter, could the Foreign Secretary say what he means by that phrase in that connection, and whether we ourselves are to play any part in trying to achieve that political settlement?

Mr. Lloyd: What I was trying to make clear to the House was that there is a very complicated pattern of tribal loyalties which changes almost overnight and that in certain tribes the loyalties are divided. In fact, many members of the Imam's own family are loyal to the Sultan. What I meant is that this is not just a military operation, but an attempt to sort out the pattern of tribal loyalties and restore the situation of 1955.
In further reply to the right hon. Member for Grimsby (Mr. Younger), I did say in the statement that
it was at the request of a friendly ruler who had always relied on us to help him resist aggression or subversion.
just as in 1930 when action was taken with warships to deal with the Shiek of Khassab.

Mr. Beswick: The Foreign Secretary referred to the long-term policy of Her Majesty's Government in that part of the world. Can he say whether he can give an affirmative reply to my Question No. 75?

Mr. Lloyd: I am sure that the hon. Member will receive an appropriate reply to that Question.

Mr. Lipton: Has the Foreign Secretary yet been able to discover where the arms that are being used by the Imam and his followers come from? He seems to be well informed on everything else; is he well informed on that?

Mr. Lloyd: Not yet, Sir.

Following is the summary:

Summary of First Leaflet

Talib, Ghalib and Suleiman bin Hamyar have stirred up trouble to serve their selfish ends. Necessary steps will be taken against them until they obey the Government's orders. As a demonstration aircraft will fire on selected targets after people have been warned to get out. If this is not sufficient further steps will have to be taken to punish the district harbouring the trouble-makers. The remedy is in your own hands: turn the traitors out, send your leaders to us and fly our red flag.

Summary of Second Leaflet

Omanis, you have now seen a demonstration of the fire-power of aircraft. Turn out the traitors to avoid further destruction. Omanis, your trade and prosperity are also in danger. During the last two years I have built you a new road to bring your produce to the sea, you have doctors living among you for the first time, a travelling hospital and the advice of


agricultural experts. Above all, you had peace to enable you to go about your lawful business. Now the traitors have come, the road is blocked. Trade is interrupted and every man goes in fear of his neighbour. Turn out the traitors and we will resume together the march towards progress and prosperity in peace and security.

Summary of Warning Leaflet

The Sultan of Muscat and Oman issues a warning that your fortresses will be attacked by aircraft the day after tomorrow. The object of the attack is not to destroy but to demonstrate that we have effective, powerful weapons.

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Proceedings on Motion relating to Local Government exempted, at this day's Sitting, from provisions of Standing Order No. 1 (Sittings of the House)for One hour after Ten o'clock—[M r. R. A. Butler.]

STANDING ORDER No. 9 (MR. SPEAKER'S RULING)

3.45 p.m.

Mr. Wedgwood Benn: I beg to move,
That this House is of the opinion that the statement made by the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs on 22nd July, in which he announced that the British authorities in Muscat and Oman had been given discretion, within certain limits, to take military action, constituted a definite matter of urgent public importance under Standing Order No. 9, and regrets that Mr. Speaker did not rule to that effect.
In moving my Motion, Mr. Speaker, I should like to begin in the traditional way by saying that it is, of course, moved in good faith as a House of Commons matter and that the wording of the Motion is such that it could not possibly lead—nor is it intended to—to any debate on the rights or wrongs of the action of the Government in Oman. The fact that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), who is seconding the Motion, takes the contrary view to mine on the merits of the action of the Government in Oman, is a sufficient guarantee of that.
This is a House of Commons matter, because I am appealing to the House of Commons to review one of the Rulings you have given. Of course, the history of Parliament is the history of the House of Commons entrusting to its Speaker increasing responsibility for the conduct of our debates. A century ago your position, Mr. Speaker, was more like that of a Lord Chancellor in another place today, who exercises little or no responsibility at all over the debates.
Over the course of time, this House has entrusted two types of responsibility to you. First, there is the responsibility of acting as an umpire between both sides of the House, seeing that the Government get their business and the minority gets its right to speak; and also, in that connection, there is the responsibility in your choice of hon. Members to address the House. That is your rôle as umpire and I do not challenge it today.
There is a second rôle which has been entrusted to you. That is to act as interpreter of our Standing Orders. Under Statute and under our Standing Orders you are called upon to reach what I can only call many judicial decisions. I give


as an example that under the Parliament Act it is your responsibility to give a certificate if, in your view, a Bill is a money Bill. That certificate is sufficient to pass the Finance Bill without the assent of another place. That is a judicial function.
Similarly, if an hon. Member appeals to you on a point of Privilege, you decide whether it shall have priority over the Orders of the Day on a judicial basis. I am appealing to the House of Commons against a judicial interpretation of Standing Order No. 9. Indeed, there is no one else to whom I could appeal, since the House of Commons is a sovereign body. I am coming as a suppliant, exercising the rights given even to the meanest Member of this House against a Ruling of the Chair.
This is not the only occasion when this problem has arisen. As a House, we are called upon to be judges in our own case when we consider a question of Privilege and also to vote ourselves money because there is no senior body to which we can go. Therefore, in introducing the Motion, I submit that I am doing no more than what is done in the court when an appeal is taken beyond a judge to a superior court. Just as the judge whose ruling is reversed on appeal is not taken thereupon to be censured for all his conduct, so this Motion is a Motion of censure on one act, but not a Motion of no confidence in the Chair or the present occupant of the Chair. To underline that—and I say this at the beginning so that there shall be no misunderstanding—it is not my intention to vote for my Motion. If I have permission, I shall withdraw it in order that there shall not be a Division of the House upon it.
The case which I submit to you is very simple. It is that last Monday you wrongly interpreted Standing Order No. 9. To develop my point, I should like to say a word, if I may, about Standing Order No. 9, because seventy-five years ago any Member of the House could move the Adjournment of the House for any reason, and that Motion had priority over the Orders of the Day. It was Mr. Gladstone who, in 1882, decided that it was necessary, at the time when he introduced the Closure, also to introduce some limitation on the rights of Members to adjourn the House. There were thirty

days of debate on our Standing Orders, of which nineteen were taken up with the debate on the Closure—of course, the Closure could not be applied to them—and three were taken up with the discussion of this new Standing Order.
In the form in which the Standing Order was first presented to the House, the words
definite matter of urgent public importance
did not appear. Mr. Gladstone himself amended his own Motion in the course of the debate to make it clear that the purpose of these Adjournments was to be only for a
definite matter of urgent public importance".
In the course of the debate Mr. Parnell asked the then Speaker how he would interpret the words
definite matter of urgent public importance",
and, as reported in c. 1448 of HANSARD of that day, Mr. Speaker said:
The construction that I should put on the Amendment"—
that is, the words "definite matter of urgent public importance"—
…is that the question of urgency should rest not with the Speaker, but with the Member desiring to bring the question forward.
Indeed, a week later, when the procedure was first brought into action, and when an hon. Member, Mr. York, sought to move the Adjournment of the House on these grounds, the definite matter which he raised was, he said:
the conduct of the Government, and in particular the conduct of the right hon. Gentleman at the head of the Government, in reference to a controversy recently at issue between himself and me with regard to the release of the three prisoners of Kilmainham Gaol a few months ago.
That was the definite matter of urgent public importance. Another hon. Member—Mr. Thorold Rogers—rose and protested to the Chair saying:
I beg to rise to Order. I wish to know whether, in your opinion, Sir,…the question can be raised as to whether this is a matter of urgent public importance?
Mr. Speaker said:
The hon. Member, upon his own responsibility, has stated that it is a matter of urgent public importance I have no authority for contravening that statement."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th November, 1882; Vol. 275, C. 21–2.]
That is the Standing Order as it was introduced by Mr. Gladstone, accepted by the House and interpreted by the Chair.


It is no part of my object today to suggest that that Ruling of the Chair still remains in force. Of course, over the seventy-five years the Chair has constantly reinterpreted its functions. If hon. Members will look at Erskine May, they will see that there are no fewer than six pages of leading references to definitions by Mr. Speaker of the meaning of those words. Hon. Members will see that every one of those words has been defined. The word "definite" has been defined as meaning "a single specific matter", that the "facts are clear" and not "hypothetical." The word "urgent" means "of recent occurrence and raised without delay", "no ordinary opportunity coming for debate." The words "public importance" have been underlined by the necessity for the support of 40 Members, and the Government responsibility must have been established beyond any doubt.
It is my submission not only that there has been a great change from the original interpretation of this Standing Order, but that even as the Standing Order stood on Monday of last week it was your duty, Mr. Speaker, to rule that a
definite matter of urgent public importance
had occurred.
I want to make only a very brief reference to what the Foreign Secretary said on Monday. As I have said, I make no attack upon his statement. He pointed out that the local British authorities had been
given discretion within certain limits to take military action".
I asked him, in a supplementary question,
whether he will give an assurance to the House that British troops, aircraft and ships will not be engaged until the House has hem told of it in advance?
I had no right to demand that, for it is the right of the Government to act without consulting Parliament, but it is also the right of Parliament to ask the Government whether there will be an opportunity to debate such matter before action is taken, and I exercised That right to elicit a point of fact. I was given the answer:
Certainly not".
Armed with the statement that the decision had been taken and the assurance that there would be no further opportunity for discussion, I came to you, Mr. Speaker, to raise it as a
definite matter of urgent public importance".

You will remember that the wording of my Motion was:
…namely, the decision of Her Majesty's Government to offer British military assistance…
In reply you gave three Rulings, and I should like, if I may, very briefly to take the House through the three Rulings which you gave. First, you said that it was not urgent, and these are the words which you used:
I think that this submission must fail on the ground of urgency. We have just heard that, at the moment, there are no British troops in Muscat—I understand that to be the position—and we are not in possession of any of the facts of the situation which would entitle me to regard this as an urgent matter.
The answer to your Ruling, if I may be allowed to give it, was that I did not raise the matter of urgency on the ground of the presence of British troops, but on the ground that a decision had already been taken, and, therefore, no facts could possibly have entered into what I said because the only fact was the statement of the Foreign Secretary. Indeed, you said later, in another passage, that the facts were "sketchy". Part of the object of Parliamentary debate, I have always understood, was to bring pressure on the Government to turn a situation which was uncertain into one of greater certainty by compelling them to give the answers which hon. Members required. I submit that if a decision to commit troops were not urgent, then it is very questionable whether anything can possibly be urgent.
Your second Ruling was on what I might call a legal matter. I said that this matter might possibly be of special importance because it might be a breach of international law, and you ruled:
If the hon. Member says that it is against any treaty that we should do so, that is a legal matter that he should argue at the proper time.
But legal complications cannot reduce urgency. They may, indeed, underline it. The fact that legal matters entered into this was an extra strong reason why you should have ruled in my favour.
Your third argument was what I might call the Supply Day argument. You said:
May I also remind the House that there are this week four, I think, Supply Days, that next week there is the Appropriation Bill, and that on any of these days this matter can be discussed in all its aspects. That is, in itself, sufficient ground, as has been ruled by all my


predecessors, for my refusing to receive a Motion of this sort."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd July. 1957; Vol. 574, c. 32–7.]
I believe that there are two answers to your Ruling. The first is that if the matter were urgent under the Standing Order, then it was so urgent that it could not wait as long as next week. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I am not discussing the merits of the issue, but if a matter is urgent under the Standing Orders it cannot wait until an Appropriation Bill debate the following week. Indeed, I suggest that if any Speaker in the future were in a restrictive frame of mind he would find in Mr. Speaker Morrison's Ruling of 22nd July, 1957, precedent enough to clamp down on any plea for urgency made by a back bencher.
The second argument which I would bring to bear on the Supply Day point is that your Ruling, though technically correct, is now out of keeping with the character of modern Supply Days. I looked at the business for last week. It was, Monday, Roads and Colonial Air Services; Tuesday, Disarmament; Wednesday, Scottish Health; Thursday, Economic Situation: today, Local Government; tomorrow, Local Government; Wednesday, Redundancy; and Thursday, Old-age Pensions. Is it true to say that on these matters, that on any of these days, the question of Muscat and Oman "could be discussed in all its aspects?"
You were not in the Chair on any of those days, Mr. Speaker, but if I had gone to the Chair and asked to be called on Scottish health, and had been asked, "What line are you taking?", and if I had said. "I am against the Government on Muscat and Oman". I should have been very surprised if I had been called. Had I shown the ingenuity shown by my hon. Friend the Member for South Ayrshire (Mr. Emrys Hughes), I might have been able to keep in order in discussing it, had I been called, but if I had been frank with the Chair about my intentions then the Chair would not have called me, rightly, because it would have been a graver abuse to interject a speech on Muscat and Oman into a debate on Scottish health or redundancy or old-age pensions than it would have been to seek to move the Adjournment of the House.
This is the point which I put before you: that your Ruling makes sense only if it is addressed to the leader of a great party, because the leader of a party can change the business for a Supply Day if he chooses. If he chose, my right hon. Friend the Member for Leeds, South (Mr. Gaitskell)could have taken disarmament off for Tuesday and put on Muscat and Oman as the subject for the debate. Therefore, your Ruling that the opportunities existed is addressed only to a party and not to a Member.
This is why, of course, I have tabled this Motion today. Many of my hon. Friends have said—and I do not blame them—"Why should an hon. Member with a grievance against the Chair delay the business of a Supply Day today?" The answer, of course, is that these Rulings, and particularly the Supply Day Ruling, about Standing Order No. 9 and the remedy are addressed only to a party; and they touch two of the most important principles which govern our proceedings in this House, and, indeed, two of the principles most discussed when it comes to Parliament itself.
When we talk about Standing Order No. 9 we are talking about the back benchers. The Front Benchers can decide their business whenever they choose. If I may use an analogy from the realm of food, the Front Benchers on both sides are in the privileged position of reading every day from a menu of their own choosing, as they lounge on the couches beside the banqueting table. They are discussing what they want to discuss, the Government because of the precedent of their business and my right hon. Friends because of our Supply Days. But the back benchers here are a hardier race. We have to grub for our food. A Parliamentary Question is all that we get, and it is a job very often to get the chance to ask a supplementary. We have to hope that we shall get the evening Adjournment; we have to ballot for a Motion. We have, when we believe it urgent, the security of Standing Order No. 9.
If you take away this right, Mr. Speaker, or restrict this right, you are doing damage in a battle which, in my view, is just as important as any other battle we fight in this House; that is, the battle of the back benchers to win a place in the House from the Front


Benchers. I submit that this is one reason, at any rate, why this is a House of Commons matter and is not something which in any way affects our party alliegance.
The second reason why this is important is that Mr. Speaker's remedy being addressed to a party highlights the relationship between a Member of Parliament and his party. If my right hon. Friend and my party had wanted to debate Oman last week they could have done so, but they did not want to debate Oman last week. I shall not attempt to say why. But it is perfectly clear and obvious that my hon. Friends could have asked for a debate, changed the business for a Supply Day and could easily have brought on a debate on Oman if they had wanted to do so.
What happened, Mr. Speaker, was that you gave a Ruling which was a remedy for my party but not a remedy for me. You may very well say, "What right have you to choose?" The answer is that I have not a right to choose in this matter unless it is urgent, definite and of public importance; and then I claim under Standing Order No. 9 I have the right to choose on one condition, and that is that I have the support of 40 hon. Members of this House. I do not know whether they would have risen in their places. They might not have done. My grumble and complaint is that they were not given a chance.
The party system is well embedded in our form of Parliamentary Government. We all know that one cannot get elected to Parliament unless one has a party label. We know when we come here that the organisation of business is done through the Whips. I think I am a good party man. I believe that we can achieve nothing unless we act together and I also believe that we must be prepared to hang together. Sometimes I think that that fate is particularly appropriate to some and not all of my hon. Friends. But I accept the party. For the modern party system, even at its most oppressive, does not in any way limit our right to speak. It may limit how we vote at the end of the day, although in my own party and in the party opposite we have the right of abstention on grounds of principle. That is a comfort which I draw from the restriction of the party system. "It is

not what a man does that matters; it is what he says."
It is not the vote at the end of the day that limits our right. It is the right of free thought and free speech that is left unfettered by the party system. If you, Mr. Speaker, give a Ruling which means that an individual back bencher cannot raise a point, even within Standing Orders, without the support of his party, then you give to the party a power over the Members which I believe would be an imposition on the rights of the House.
I plead with my right hon. Friend, or my party, not to misunderstand my views on this question of party discipline. Party discipline has been discussed recently in the columns of the Manchester Guardian, in the columns of Pravda and even in China itself. If I may draw an analogy from abroad, I am not forming an anti-party faction at all, in the sense that Mr. Molotov was. I am one of the thousand flowers asking permission to be allowed to blossom.
Many of my hon. Friends have said unkind things to me since I tabled this Motion, and some of them have said kind things. But the thing that has depressed me most of all has been the question, Why make all this fuss on a procedural matter?" Parliamentary Government is itself procedural. When we come to this House, by our very election we each pay our own tribute to procedure. The methods we use for resolving our differences, in the long run, are more important than the differences that divide us.
When the Election manifestoes have turned yellow in the library of the British Museum and when HANSARD has interest only to the historians, the Standing Orders which we are debating today will still be at hand to guide a Member in 2057 or 2157. I believe that if we could speak to the Mother of Parliaments herself, she would agree with me. I do not believe that she cares for the Members of this House, not even for you, Mr. Speaker, or for the famous on both sides—certainly not for me, who can be remembered only by a fading signature in the Test-Roll of Parliament. She does not care for us. We are not her children. Her children are the practices and usages of this House.
And I believe that if we pressed the Mother of Parliaments further she would even say that she would trade all the statues in the Members' Lobby for one good footnote in Erskine May.

4.7 p.m.

Mr. R. T. Paget: I beg to second this Motion.
I support this Motion for precisely the reasons so admirably expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn). I believe that we are considering a right of back benchers, and that if we back benchers do not stand up for our rights the Front Bench certainly will not do it for us. Nobody is interested in the rights, privileges and powers of others if those can be obtained only by subtraction from their own; and Front Benchers do not differ from anyone else in that respect.
I certainly do not wish to second this Motion because I disagree with the Government's policy on Muscat or Oman. On that, I would be far more likely to disagree with my hon. Friend. For my part, I am sick of Foreign Secretaries telling us that they are taking certain action to slop a war, to help the United Nations or their good friend, the Sultan. I would be only too glad if they were to say that British forces were being used to enforce British interests. Frankly, that is what I provide British forces for.
Nor do I, in any sense, support this Motion, Mr. Speaker, as being derogatory to you or to your office. Four years ago we elected you our Speaker. Personally, I am heartily glad that we did so, and I know that neither you nor the House will believe that I would say that if I did not think it. But we did not elect you to be Pope. We did not ask of you, or expect of you, infallibility. We have provided a procedure, a proper procedure, whereby particular Rulings of the Chair may be challenged. That is being done in this instance.
Mr. Speaker, you and I belong to a great profession. We have received, on occasion, judges' decisions that we did not like. We appealed against them. By that, we were not impugning the capacity or the integrity of the judge or, indeed, the greatness of his office. The notice of appeal was the procedure for challenging his decision. So is this

Motion the procedure for challenge here. I would only say this. Of late, there has been a certain habit—and I say immediately that I have been guilty of it, perhaps, a good deal more than most—of rising to argue decisions when they are given. That is a new practice and. perhaps, not a desirable one. It is by Motion that the matter ought to be challenged, and it may be desirable that that should be done, because that is the right procedure.
Having dealt with that, let me just say one word about the Standing Order—and my hon. Friend put is so well that I can deal with it very shortly indeed. Standing Order No. 9 is a right of the back bencher to rise, and to have his voice heard upon an urgent matter of public importance—not the single exception, but the back bencher who expresses a sufficient body of opinion to have 40 Members of this House to support him.
As for the question of urgency of this particular debate, I think that that was clear. Its desirability was another matter. I should not have been one of those to rise if the Motion had been put, but it was my decision, in my submission, not the Chair's, and I would say that not only is this a right of the back benchers, important to back benchers, but it is peculiarly the right of Government back benchers.
When one is in Opposition, and 40 of one's hon. Friends want to kick the Government over something, one can generally get one's own Front Bench to have a bat at the Government. Generally speaking, that is so, but that is not the position when one is on the Government side. Two of the great debates that come to my mind which have been raised under this Standing Order were raised from the Government side.
One was when the Jewish Agency was closed down and its members arrested in Palestine. My hon. Friend the Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman)raised the Adjournment of the House against his own Government, and one of the most notable debates that I have ever known in my life occurred as a consequence. I was, myself, involved in the question of sending tanks to King Farouk. On that occasion, the policy of my own Government was changed.
It is, in particular, the right of Government back benchers that is guarded in Standing Order No. 9, and it is, therefore, highly important for them that they should not see it whittled away. I say that to them in considerable seriousness because, according to the Press—I hope that it is untrue—in this highly House of Commons matter, a matter which has nothing to do with party, a three-line Whip has been issued. [HON. MEMBERS: "Shame."] In my submission that is wholly contrary to the tradition of Parliament. This is a matter in which we on the back benches are considering a precedent with regard to our particular rights.
Another point that I should like to make relates to the working of this Standing Order. I believe that the tremendous change in the practice under it has reached the point where it ought to be reconsidered by the Rules Committee. I hope that the Leader of the House will consider that. Secondly, I believe that under this Standing Order it would be desirable and, I think, within the precedent—that is, within your power, Mr. Speaker—to hear arguments, where you consider it necessary, before, instead of after, giving your decision.
To take this particular case as an illustration, if you had turned to my hon. Friend, before you gave the Ruling, and had asked, "Where do you say the urgency is here?" my hon. Friend could have given his explanation. ft may be even that other hon. Members might have assisted you by advancing arguments, but I can find nothing definite in the Standing Order or, indeed, in the precedent. On occasion, argument has been heard before the Chair has given a Ruling; on occasion, the Chair has asked the Government Front Bench if they had anything to add. I believe that to hear argument first would be a most useful practice, because it is very difficult for the Chair to give a Ruling without hearing argument.
As to the Ruling in question, I am hound to say, in words that I think that I used before, that to provide authority to commit British troops to battle in a foreign country must be an urgent matter. It is urgent in a sense that it must be debated at once, precisely because one has not the information. It ceases to be

urgent once the authority has been exercised. Once the authority has been exercised, the horse is stolen and it is of no use closing the door. Where the matter of urgency is the giving of the authority then it is urgent that that giving of the authority be debated before the authority is acted on; because, once it has been acted on, then, indeed, the urgency has gone, because the authority is superseded by the action.
I venture to say this. In the old days—and I turn to -end where I started with regard to this procedural point—appeals in the King's Bench went to a full bench, upon which the judge against whom the appeal was lodged himself sat. The matter was fully argued. On a number of occasions, the judge himself agreed to the over-ruling of his decision, because it was wrong. I have a feeling. Mr. Speaker, that if this matter were fully debated before you as a Member of this House, and in this House, it might be that, on this occasion, as to the question of urgency, you might yourself agree to alter this decision.
At any rate, this is a matter of House of Commons importance, and I feel that my hon. Friend had a right to raise it not as a challenge to you or to your office, but as a matter which, I believe, is important to the rights of back benchers on both sides of the House.

4.20 p.m.

Mr. Godfrey Nicholson: I cannot hope to emulate the eloquence of the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn)and the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget). I do, however, claim to equal them in their love for the House of Commons, and to exceed them in Parliamentary experience. It is because I have long Parliamentary experience and because of my love for the House of Commons that I hope the House will forgive me if I appear to be a little pompous and pontifical.
After about twenty-five years of life in Parliament it is borne in on me more and more that this House depends upon the authority, the majesty and the dignity of the Chair and the respect which is paid to it. I differ from the hon. and learned Member for Northampton in this—we are not discussing whether this right of private Members to move the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order


No. 9 ought to be established or reestablished, or whether it is right or wrong. What we are really debating now is whether the verdict of the Chair, of you, Mr. Speaker, should be challengeable.
I am not concerned with whether your Ruling the other day was right or wrong. As one who has a deep affection for the House of Commons, I am concerned with this, that it derogates from the dignity of the Chair and, therefore, from the reputation and the usefulness of this House if the Ruling of the Speaker of the day is criticised or challenged.
The hon. and learned Member for Northampton said that we have not elected you Pope, that we have not conferred any infallibility upon you. I know that that is true, but I believe it is bad for this House and bad for Parliamentary tradition when the utter impartiality of the Chair—I am not talking about the infallibility of the Chair—and the dignity of the Chair are questioned. For that reason, I deeply regret the Motion that has been moved.
I go further. I very much regret whenever any hon. Member—myself or anybody else—argues with you, Mr. Speaker, on any Ruling. When I first came to the House in the days of Mr. Speaker Fitzroy, when a Motion for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 was moved, no argument or discussion was permitted. Owing to his kindness of heart, Mr. Speaker Clifton-Brown began to permit argument with him over his Rulings on those Motions. I venture humbly to suggest to you, Mr. Speaker, that the time has now come when, having given your decision, you should stand by it and should not permit argument or discussion.
I do indeed believe—and I say this with the deepest sincerity—that you, as Mr. Speaker, are the key to the success of the Parliamentary system. I often resent or differ from your Rulings. I am sure that every hon. Member is bound to resent some of the Rulings of the Chair, but I believe that we are doing a grave disservice to the whole tradition and usefulness of Parliament and of Parliamentary democracy if we do anything to derogate from the dignity and majesty of your office. For that reason, I deeply resent the Motion which has been moved.

4.24 p.m.

Mr. Austen Alton: The hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson)has done no credit to the way in which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn)moved his Motion. My hon. Friend made it clear that he was not in any way challenging or criticising your impartiality, Mr. Speaker, but was merely challenging your interpretation of what is an extremely difficult Standing Order.
I only wish to speak because your Ruling has underlined a growing anxiety which I have had in my mind, particularly during the last year. The occasion of my hon. Friend moving his Motion for the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 was the committal by the Government of British troops in an extremely inflammable area. We have in our Parliamentary arrangements no constitutional safeguard against a Government committing British forces to action such as they have in some countries, including the United States.
For myself, I do not want any alteration in our arrangements or any change in the broad prerogatives by which Her Majesty's Government are entitled to commit troops to action or to make treaties, so long as what we have always considered to be the traditional safeguards against dangerous or irresponsible action should continue to operate.
Among those safeguards, I would consider, are full discussion in the Cabinet before such action takes place; full consultation by the Government with their advisers, including their overseas representatives and other members of the Commonwealth and our allies; the insurance of public support; and, as has grown up in more recent times, consultation with the Opposition.
It was all these which were lacking at the time of the Suez crisis last year and which gave some of us very great anxiety about the way in which the normal safeguards against irresponsible action by the Government were being avoided. This may not be such a serious occasion, but I think that the House of Commons should have had the opportunity, even at the instigation of only one Member, to find out the Government's intentions and, if necessary, to criticise the Government's intentions by means of this final


safeguard which is the right of any Member to challenge or discuss, on a matter of urgent and definite importance, the action of the Government at the earliest opportunity.
This, of course, can only be done by moving the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9. It is for this reason that I felt that your Ruling on this occasion was wrong, because it added to the growing anxieties which I have felt ever since last year with the action of the Government in Suez. I realise that on that occasion the matter was raised and criticised officially by the Opposition, but I still feel that where British troops are committed to action it should be the right of any back bench Member to discuss this matter on the earliest possible occasion.

4.26 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Kershaw: I thought, after listening to the two very eloquent speeches of the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn)and the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), that there was some danger of it being suggested that to criticise this Motion is to criticise Standing Order No. 9. It seems to me that the two eloquent speeches went no further than this. Standing Order No. 9 is a very proper safeguard of the rights of back benchers, from which no one would dissent and which we should do everything possible to maintain.
I entirely agree with that opinion, but surely we must not lose sight of the fact that Standing Order No. 9 always arises in certain circumstances, and in the particular circumstances of your decision, Mr. Speaker, I suggest that there is no decision that the Chair could have given other than the one which you gave.
The question of committing British troops is, of course, urgent in the sense that military action is always urgent, but they were being committed, if not exactly in pursuance of a treaty, at least in pursuance of an understanding or an agreement of friendship with a friendly State. If it is to be the doctrine that Standing Order No. 9 shall always be invoked if British troops are likely to be committed in any military action, that seems to me to go to the prerogative mentioned by the hon. Member for Edmonton (Mr. Albu).

That raises far different constitutional questions than merely the operation of Standing Order No. 9.
If it is to be accepted that the House of Commons shall always have the right to debate, before the Government of the day carry out their obligations under a treaty or an understanding with a friendly State, I suggest that that goes to the prerogative and is tantamount to saying that no Government can take action in foreign affairs without the previous agreement of this House. On those grounds, and on the facts which were known to the Chair, I submit that it was not possible to take any other decision than the one you took by rejecting the Motion for the Adjournment of the House on that occasion.

4.29 p.m.

Mr. Donald Chapman: You will recall, Mr. Speaker, that I had an Amendment on the Order Paper seeking to add at the end of the Motion the following words:
it further considers that the present interpretation of the Standing Order, based often on rulings given in different historical conditions, now tends unduly to frustrate the House and prevent it from proceeding to discuss an urgent matter of public importance; and is of opinion that the interpretation be referred to a Select Committee.
I should explain that I withdrew that Amendment from the Order Paper because, on consideration, we felt that it was not right to develop the debate into a wholesale discussion on the Standing Orders of the House. But I think I made the point by putting the Amendment on the Order Paper, and it has been developed in the speeches of my hon. Friends, namely, the point that what is probably wrong in these circumstances is the interpretation of Standing Order No. 9 as it has been developed since 1882. We are now frustrated on the back benches and have been unable to raise matters of urgent public importance because of the case law which has been built up by various Speakers in past years—case law which is now. I believe, unduly restrictive.
Before I say something about that, let me say a few words on the immediate issue between my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn)and Mr. Speaker. I am quite sure, to summarise his complaint, that his protest is not so much for some of the reasons


which have been given by other hon. Members, but because he asked to be allowed to raise one urgent matter of public importance which he specified, and that Mr. Speaker ruled on quite a different matter. My hon. Friend raised the matter of the Minister's decision to commit troops, and Mr. Speaker ruled on the fact that the troops were not yet there, that they had not arrived and that the information was "sketchy". Of course, that was an entirely different matter. As my other hon. Friends have said, it was a case of being unable now to raise matters of public importance that have been decided upon before it is too late to prevent the Minister from withdrawing from his decision. It was an unfortunate way of ruling out my hon. Friend's Motion.
On the question of Standing Order No. 9, I hope that the Lord Privy Seal will at least give us an assurance that there will be some examination of it. This Standing Order arose from the history of the late nineteenth century in this House, when Irish hon. Members were making something of a bear garden of the House of Commons because of the grievances which they were raising—something like a dozen Adjournment Motions every year—and the Government of the day rightly protested that they could not get their business.
Therefore, Standing Order No. 9 was introduced, was restrictive and negative, and tried to prevent people from having too many opportunities to raise the matters that bother back benchers. What has now happened, based on that interesting origin of the Standing Order, is that it has been further narrowed, has become further restrictive and negative, and Mr. Speaker has only been to some extent following tradition in making it narrower still. We have now reached a situation in which we ought to have a Select Committee to examine the whole of the Standing Orders.
If, at the end of Questions, we are going to move on to a debate on the Adjournment, then a debate on a matter under Standing Order No. 9 is immediately ruled out. If we are moving on to a debate in Committee of Supply, on the Consolidated Fund, or on Estimates, immediately Mr. Speaker has to rule that the urgent matter is unable to be discussed under the Standing Order. In that

sense, the whole purpose of the Standing Order is often frustrated in the first place.
Secondly, it is based on a fiction that once was a fact, a fiction that on Estimates, on the Consolidated Fund, or whatever else it is, any matter can be raised. That was true in its origin, but it is now a fiction, under which various important debates are organised in agreement between the Government and the Opposition. It is now frustrating to back benchers to be told, as Mr. Speaker told us on this occasion, that the matter could be raised on Supply Days, whereas, of course, we cannot do it.
It is restrictive in the further sense that it has the disadvantages of an Adjournment debate, because nothing involving legislation can be raised, whereas the urgent matter to be raised may be a matter in which it has been found that legislation is urgently needed. I could go on through the list of restrictions imported into the Standing Order, showing that it is a very negative instrument designed to stop people from having these debates. I do not want the House of Commons to become a bear garden again I only want it to carry out the ordinary democratic processes.
I suggest that the Select Committee should have regard to the changed nature of this rule, and that these debates should no longer be called Adjournment debates under Standing Order No. 9 but should be regarded as special emergency debates. They should be emergency debates in which everyone should have the right to take part on something broadly like the existing procedure. Secondly, it should not be so hampered as it is now with all the restrictions that have grown up from the decisions preventing various matters being raised.
If we turn to Erskine May, on page 352 we find reference made to all the restrictions of the Standing Orders, and it is stated that
the grounds originally raised for disallowing a matter from being raised have been considerably narrowed by subsequent Speakers.
The House is continually in that position and finds that it is being made narrower still.
In conclusion, may I say that in 1887, when this Standing Order was originally


introduced, Mr. Beresford Hope, speaking on this power to move the Adjournment of the House, said:
—The power under discussion, much as it has been abused, was the only safety valve existing in all their proceedings…The Government know that emergencies arose in the life of Parliaments, as of nations, and knowing [hat, they must not sit down on the safety valve of their Parliamentary system.
I am sure that those words are still true today. We cannot say that we have been allowed a lot of liberality in this matter in recent years. There have been 73 occasions since the end of the war when attempts have been made to move the Adjournment of the House under this Standing Order, and only eight have been allowed. I suggest that we are narrowing the interpretation further and further until it has frustrated its purpose. I hope that the Lord Privy Seal in his reply will deal not only with the question of Mr. Speaker's decision on this occasion, but with the wider problem which worries many of us as to the interpretation of the whole of this Standing Order of the House.

4.38 p.m.

The Secretary of State for the Home Department and Lord Privy Seal (Mr. R. A. Butler): Anyone who has had the honour to be Leader of the House or who has been in this House for many years has, I hope, a natural aptitude for catching the atmosphere of the House. I think it would be wrong not to acknowledge that the spirit in which the debate has taken place has certainly not been animated by any towards Mr. Speaker personally.
The first point I wish to make is that it was right that a Motion of this importance should be taken immediately—and the precedents have been stated—because it does seem wrong to leave such a Motion on the Paper and not to give hon. Members an immediate opportunity to discuss it. That is why we are taking it early this afternoon before the important debate on local government. It is also worth noting that Motions on a matter of this sort are something of a rarity and, in my view, should be a rarity. I think it is wrong to have on the Order Paper Motions criticising the Rulings given by the Chair, and I say that with due solemnity, because I feel it is not too much to say that the authority of the Chair and the

dignity of this House are absolutely bound up together and that to imperil one is to imperil the other.
I understand that the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn)has said that he intends to withdraw his Motion. I hope that will be the case. As he has said so, we may take it that it will be withdrawn. If that is the case, I shall not need to offer the advice to the House to reject this Motion, which otherwise I should have done in the most definite terms. I do not doubt that the Leader of the Opposition might wish to say something, and perhaps other hon. Members too, but I hope that the earliest opportunity will be taken by the hon. Member for Bristol. South-East to seek an opportunity of obtaining the leave of the House to withdraw his Motion.
My hon. Friend the Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson)felt very strongly on the point that I made, about the dignity of the House, and I think that it is right to feel like that. There are not very many occasions when a Motion of this sort has been put on the Order Paper, and had Mr. Speaker been present I should have paid a personal tribute to him for the impartiality with which he has conducted his affairs over the last six years since he has been Speaker of the House.
The hon. Member for Bristol, South-East based his case largely on the Ruling of Mr. Speaker, which I have before me, namely, that there were other occasions—he used the expression, "four, I think. Supply Days," upon which this matter could be raised. The hon. Gentleman's speech would have been far more convincing if he had not referred to the day we discussed Scottish health and to the other occasions but had referred to the day immediately following, when, in fact, the Foreign Office Vote was down for discussion. It would have been perfectly possible for hon. Members to raise this matter on that occasion when the Foreign Office Vote was down. The hon. Member was leaving out a very important argument from his case when he omitted all reference to the opportunity which hon. Members would have had for raising the subject of Muscat and Oman.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: As a Scottish Member, may I point out that we only get a day on Scottish health


because hon. Members wish to attend the Royal Garden Party?

Mr. Butler: There are always two Scottish days at the end of every Session, and, as usual, we have arranged them on the day most convenient to the House.
As the House will be aware, the precedent by which Mr. Speaker must be governed, as was mentioned by the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East, is to be found in some four or five pages of Erskine May, the most important page being page 352, under the second heading that the "Matter must be urgent," to which he referred. In paragraph (c), it is there said, citing endless precedents for it:
the motion has been refused when an ordinary Parliamentary opportunity will occur shortly or in time.
It is our view that such an opportunity did, in fact, occur, and that Mr. Speaker's Ruling was a just and proper one. We believe that the opportunity given on the next occasion for this matter to be debated was sufficient in the interests of hon. Members and of the House as a whole.

Mr. Paget: Even if one assumes that there might have been an opportunity on a Supply Day which could have been devoted to this matter, by the time the morrow came British troops had been committed and British aircraft had been in action.

Mr. Butler: My difficulty is that, as Leader of the House, I am not, so to speak, taking sides upon the question—[Interruption.] Perhaps the House would listen to me—of the convenience of the Government. The Government are ready to face debate or criticism or to answer the queries of hon. Members on the back benches at any time of the day or night. I am simply saying that, as Leader of the House, in my opinion Mr. Speaker acted according to precedent. The reason which he gave in his Ruling was
In my view, unless we know something more about this case…and the limits which have been placed on that discretion"—
namely, the discretion within certain limits to take military action—
I do not think that I can call it under the Standing Order."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 22nd July, 1957: Vol. 399, c. 37.]

In my opinion, looking at it from the point of view of Mr. Speaker's Ruling, that was a ruling which it was proper for him to give. I am not discussing Government policy; I am not discussing the situation from the Government's angle. I am simply giving reasons why I think Mr. Speaker gave his Ruling and why I think we should not support the Motion on the Order Paper.

Mr. A. Fenner Brockway: (Eton and Slough): I am quite sure that the right hon. Gentleman wishes to be fair to my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol. South-East. He said that my hon. Friend did not mention the Foreign Office debate. My hon. Friend referred to the disarmament debate, and I hope, therefore, the right hon. Gentleman will withdraw that particular statement.

Mr. Butler: Certainly, the hon. Gentleman did refer to the disarmament debate, and I will withdraw any suggestion that he made no reference to it. What he did not say was that there was the Foreign Office Vote, and it would have been quite in order to discuss Muscat and Oman on that Vote if he so desired. That is what I think he should have brought forward, which I think brings Mr. Speaker's Ruling within the bounds of precedent, according to Erskine May.
The only other two matters I have to answer are a request for further investigation into Standing Orders, and a request for a meeting of what has been described as the Rules Committee. I canot give any such undertaking today, except to say that those of us who are connected with the Committee on Procedure and those of us who are responsible for the business of the House, and the usual channels, will certainly pay attention to the needs of back benchers. It is our business to do so, and it is the business of Mr. Speaker, as of the Leader of the House, to take care of minorities in the House.
However, I would not say that the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East, however eloquent his remarks have been, has been unable to blossom through the last few months and years. In fact, we regard him as a somewhat luxuriant weed in this Assembly. I do not think that he need feel himself to be in any way inhibited or put back. I have with me a particularly luxuriant newspaper article,


sent to me by one of my hon. Friends who took it from a Sunday newspaper, wherein the hon. Gentleman informed his readers about his feelings in moving this Motion, saying that he felt a condition of absolute terror in the lower part of his inside. All I can say is that he does not show it when he speaks; nor did his excellent father when he moved a similar Motion several years ago. There is something in this plant which is endemic in this matter.
I should strongly advise the House, while accepting the wit and eloquence of the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East, and the spirit in which he moved his Motion, to take the view very definitely that Mr. Speaker acted in a proper manner in his Ruling, according to the best information at his disposal on this occasion. We have unbounded confidence in his fairness and impartiality, and I hope that the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East will withdraw his Motion.

4.46 p.m.

Mr. Hugh Gaitskell: I shall be very brief, because I think that the House wishes to bring this matter to a conclusion. We all agree that respect for the Chair is the very essence of our Parliamentary democracy, and that, without that respect, we could not conduct our proceedings in the manner we think appropriate. I would not, however, go so far as the hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson)in suggesting that we ought, all of us, automatically and without question, to accept everything Mr. Speaker says. I feel that the hon. Member for Farnham has been a little too long on that side of the House and that, perhaps, if he were a Member of the Opposition again he would find his instincts in this matter changing a little. This is not to say in any way that we derogate from our fundamental respect for the Chair.
I think it is well known that we do argue with Mr. Speaker from time to time about Rulings which he gives. Here, I must put in a word for the Front Bench. Even the Front Bench has been known to argue with Mr. Speaker on Rulings he has given. It is one thing, however, to argue with Mr. Speaker. It is another thing to support a Motion of this kind. I myself would not agree with my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget)that it is better

to accept Mr. Speaker's Ruling without question at the time, without argument_ even though one strongly disagrees, and to put a Motion down afterwards. In my view, the present arrangement by which, if we think it right, we usually try a bit of argument with Mr. Speaker but do not put down Motions is the right way round.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn)made a most excellent speech which, I think, was appreciated by the whole House. If we are to continue the flowers metaphor, I hope that he will have a very long and pleasant period of continuous blooming throughout the summer. Also, despite his rather cynical reference to the Front Bench, I would say about my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton that I hope he too has a good time as a flower.
This is, as has been said, a House of Commons matter, and we must look at it in that light. I am bound to say that I regret that the party opposite has, apparently, issued a three-line Whip on a matter of this kind. It is for hon. Gentlemen opposite to settle these issues, but I feel that the Patronage Secretary has in this case made a mistake. However, that should not affect our judgment as to what we should do. For my part, recognising that in this particular instance there was a very definite difference of opinion with Mr. Speaker—I think it was, at any rate, a borderline case—I, for my part, would not and could not support the Motion, and I am very glad that my hon. Friend has promised to withdraw it.

4.50 p.m.

Mr. Leslie Hale: I had intended to speak formally on this matter, but in view of the way matters have progressed I propose to make only two or three very brief points. I entirely agree with every point put by the mover of the Motion, my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn), and I disagree with very little said so fairly and vividly by the Leader of the House. I always listen with attention to the hon. Member for Farnham (Mr. Nicholson), and, indeed, with regard, but I felt that when he said that there was an attack on the impartiality of Mr. Speaker he was saying something that did not exist in the Motion.

Mr. Nicholson: I was not suggesting that there was an attack on the impartiality of Mr. Speaker. I said that any criticism of Mr. Speaker is liable to degenerate into such an attack and that I deplore criticism of him because I believe him to be the personification of this House.

Mr. Hale: The hon. Gentleman said subsequently that he sometimes resented Mr. Speaker's decision, which seems the strongest criticism made of Mr. Speaker in the debate. I do not resent Mr. Speaker's decisions. I am well aware that for a humble back bencher like myself it would be almost as much an impertinence to compliment Mr. Speaker as to criticise him.
I had hoped that the hon. Gentleman would proceed with the eulogy he planned, because I should like to be associated with any expression of appreciation. Indeed, I have myself had reason to express my appreciation of the great dignity, the great learning, the wit, the good humour, the tolerance and the forbearance with which Mr. Speaker has faced very difficult Parliamentary decisions for a long time.
May I venture to say that I am on record in the matter? It is not without its significance that when practically the whole party put down, not as a party matter but with the vocal support of many hon. Members, a Motion of censure which was moved on one of the distinguished officers of this House, whom we all regard with deep respect and most of us with very great affection, and to whose return to the House restored to health we all look forward with real pleasure, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget)and I were the two hon. Members on this side of the House who expressed vocal disagreement and declined to support the Motion.
With regard to the point I now wish to put, I was surprised to find that I was already on record. When a Motion of censure was moved on 7th May, 1942—and let me say that "censure" is a Parliamentary term and, in the terms of the Oxford Dictionary, means to express disagreement, which has degenerated in the vulgar tongue into implying something quite different—I expressed the view in rather special circumstances. The Motion had been put down in the names

of two of my most intimate hon. Friends, the hon. Member for Nelson and Colne (Mr. S. Silverman)and by the then hon. Member for Devonport, and I again spoke in disagreement with it. I said that, personally, I thought it was a very good thing that the House should regularly and constantly discuss the question of its rules and the application of its procedure.
I deplore the fact that we have not found a more sensible method than of putting down a Motion called technically a Motion of censure, because that, I believe, gives it priority over ordinary business. In the twelve years that I have been a Member of the House, I have always felt that the House was far too conscious about its privileges and not too much concerned about its liberties.
We have discussed all sorts of silly things under the issue of privilege—the holding up of a car two miles from the House when a Member was coming here on an unimportant afternoon, and whether Mrs. Jones was right to call somebody a stinker on a poster. Let us face it. We have discussed matters in this way because of the silly rule which makes it incumbent on an hon. Member to rush to the House, without thinking, to raise such a matter. This could be avoided if the Rules Committee would give twenty-four hours for consultation and thought on such matters. I would prefer consultation with party leaders. My right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition will not accuse me of being over-anxious in that respect on other matters.
I think that we should protect our dignity a bit more and that if we discussed the question of liberty and the rights of back benchers it would be a useful thing, and that hon. Members on both sides of the House would want to join in with enthusiasm. We have, unfortunately, been devising a procedure. I agree with my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition that, of course, there must be the right to challenge at once and to argue.
I should have thought it a very desirable alteration, which I do not think would be contrary to the rule, if anyone who moved the Adjournment of the House under Standing Order No. 9 were given an opportunity of a few minutes to


put his reasons for it at the time instead of leaving Mr. Speaker in the almost impossibe position of having to give, on the spur of the moment, a Ruling on a highly complex matter after a brief series of questions and cross-questions, and to have regard to matters which he could only do after searching the Order Paper about priority of business and then to have to give a Ruling in a difficult position.
Although I accept the fact that one should not argue at the time, I am quite prepared to say that under the guise of points of order we have recently developed a procedure of challenging Mr. Speaker in a manner which becomes disorderly. I have been as guilty as anyone of that myself and without giving any assurances for the future, I am prepared to wear a limited amount of sackcloth and ashes for the past.
A national newspaper suggested today that Mr. Speaker's decisions should be treated like an umpire's decisions and should not be questioned. That was the sense of the speech of the hon. Member for Farnham. All of us who know anything about cricket and have seen Dick Tilsley given out 1.b.w. will not accept the mythology that the umpire's decision is accepted without question by even the least pertinacious of the 20,000 spectators without actually using one's bat as a weapon. The mythology that an umpire's decision is always respected is more unpopular in England than in Pakistan.
As has been rightly said, Mr. Speaker is called upon to give judicial decisions and to give them in conflicts and difficulties which do not confront a judge. He is called upon to balance two conflicting elements in circumstances in which it is almost inevitable that his decision should give dissatisfaction to some part of the House. Therefore, it is very wonderful that we manage in these technical arguments with the Chair to retain such confidence and such a sincere admiration for its occupant.
The other thing I wish to say to the right hon. Gentleman is that the occupant of the Chair is inevitably called upon to reconcile the rights of back benchers with the official business of the House, which, of course, is really Government business. Whether it be a Labour a Conservative

or a Liberal Government, the official business is always Government business, and in those circumstances it is always inevitable that the views of the Chair will be tinctured by the consideration of the relative importance attached to the matter by the distinguished individual who, for the time being, occupies the Chair.
I would refer the House to an example of this on 3rd March, 1947. I attempted to put a Private Notice Question and was ruled out of order by the Table and, on appeal, by Mr. Speaker. I raised the issue as a point of order and the discussion was allowed to proceed for forty-five minutes. I was raising the question of the intended execution that day of five Africans, and for forty-five minutes a debate went on. My arguments against Mr. Speaker's Ruling had some results. It may be that many hon. Members may think that a very undesirable procedure. I was happy to be told last week that two of the men concerned are now out of prison and are living in Ghana. It seems to me that might be a useful result of that intervention.
On this occasion, we were discussing what, after all, is a military operation. I have no desire to raise any issue of controversy, but a number of points of view were put forward. The noble Lord the Member for Dorset, South (Viscount Hinchingbrooke)raised an extremely important point on the whole terminology of the matter. We found out that the payment, or the offer, by King Saud to the Sheikh of Abu Dhabi of money is bribery, but that the offer of Mr. Eisenhower to King Saud is mutual aid. The hon. Member for Kidderminster (Mr. Nabarro)raised a question, which the Foreign Secretary himself said today he still cannot answer, about the attitude of one of our greatest allies in this matter and how far that ally approves of our action and to what extent it is for or against it. So they were issues of importance. I do not, however, wish to pursue that. The House has been very patient, and I know that it wants to get on to other business.
I venture to suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that the Rules Committee, or, indeed, the Government, could consider some method by which we could have a debate on a few vital matters that affect us. In parenthesis, may I say that there is no constitutional historian who does not say that, however much Mr. Speaker


protects the rights of Members, they are whittled away by an inevitable historical process. The Statue of Liberty is constantly eroded by the necessity for Government business to take increasing priority over the rights of Members.
It is, therefore, eminently desirable that these questions should be considered. If we could sometimes consider our unhappy tenure, in view of the alterations in leasehold law, of a Royal Palace under the directions of a dignitary whom none of us knows and who, apparently, obtains his office somewhat fortuitously by the drawing of lots in various families, and the rights of Members in the building, we might be discussing something worth while. If we could discuss these questions in this form without it being imputed that we were lowering the dignity of the House, it would be much more desirable. I therefore suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that he should consider these matters.
I speak for all of us when I say that because of the implications attached to such a Motion by those who do not understand the procedure of the House one always puts down such a Motion and supports it with the deepest possible reluctance and distaste. No one in the course of the whole debate, which has been conducted with very good temper and a genuine attempt to understand one another's point of view, has made any comment of any kind which reflects, nor does any comment of any kind reflect, upon either the competence or the impartiality of the Chair.

5.2 p.m.

Sir Peter Agnew: The chief value of this debate has not been what its ostensible purpose appeared to be. Indeed, it appears as if the whole House now is of an opinion contrary to that which the Motion sets forth. If the mover of the Motion, the hon. Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn), and his seconder, the hon. and learned Member for Northampton (Mr. Paget), carry out their intention and the Motion is withdrawn, I trust it will be taken that there is no suggestion whatever of any taint or slur upon Mr. Speaker's judgment being left on record and that the matter will really then have been entirely disposed of and that the whole House can proceed with its confidence

in Mr. Speaker's judgment absolutely unimpaired.

5.3 p.m.

Mr. Harold Davies: My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, South-East (Mr. Benn)has done a great service today to back benchers on both sides of the House. In pointing out the value of Standing Order No. 9 to back bench Members of a Government party, he has also done a service. Back benchers on this side used that procedure when we wanted to criticise our own party, and if we want to keep alive the virility of British politics and liberty, back benchers on both sides must have some opportunity of doing this.
There is no question of criticism of the dignity of Mr. Speaker. There is no question of criticism directly of his authority. But who are we to sit back and not be allowed occasionally, through proper procedure, to put a Motion on the Order Paper and to question these decisions on Standing Order No. 9?
My hon. Friend pointed out that there have been 73 occasions since 1945, but that on only eight of them has debate under the Standing Order been allowed. This method is not used frivolously. Every Member of Parliament, on both sides, has a sense of responsibility. If there was no sense of urgency about the sons of British mothers being brought into action in the Middle East and our having nothing told to us about it, I want to know what other thing could have a sense of urgency.
Something is happening to this House of Commons. Speeches are becoming more arid. Long speeches are being written. We are losing the art of debate. I wish Mr. Speaker would recommend that Members who read long speeches should be ruled out of order. The cut and thrust of debate is being lost, and the real pulsing virility of British freedom is being lost because a Member sits up half the night trying to make smart phrases and misses getting them across because he does not depend upon the good British sense of getting them across the Floor of the House.
I sincerely hope that the Rules Committee will listen to what back bench Members have said. There are not many opportunities for the back benchers. I and others have sometimes used them. We have tried with agility under the Ten


Minutes Rule and by Questions or sometimes by the use of Standing Order No. 9. So I sincerely hope that the Rules Committee will look into the question of written speeches.
One other thing that we must stop is the business of Members approaching Mr. Speaker to have long lists of names, because that will empty the Chamber if Members know that certain of them may speak freely and openly. If we do not keep liberty alive in this Chamber, it will be lost outside. If hon. Members on both sides know that there is a list of twenty names to be called, they will say, "What good is it for us to sit in the Chamber?" So when the Rules Committee considers this—[Laughter.] It is not a laughing matter. It spoils the debates. It spoils their spontaneity and it does not keep alive the real British attitude to the cut and thrust of debate. I hope that the Rules Committee will look into this.
The Leader of the House should have had sufficient confidence in the common sense of this Parliament not to send out a three-line Whip on this issue, because Members would have made up their minds on this matter completely irrespective of party. That shows the danger of Government power in imposing a three-line Whip on an issue like this and not allowing it to be a true House of Commons debate for back benchers. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for airing this matter and I sincerely hope that the Rules Committee will take note of the points that I have made.

Mr. Benn: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the Motion.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

LOCAL GOVERNMENT

5.8 p.m.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Mr. Henry Brooke): I beg to move,
That this House takes note of the White Papers relating to the Areas, Status, Functions and Finance of Local Authorities in England and Wales (Command Papers Nos. 9831, 161 and 209), and to Local Government Finance in Scotland (Command Paper No. 208).
This is the first day for a great many years that a Government have invited the House to discuss comprehensively, with a view to improving it and bringing it up to date, the whole structure of local government. There can be an infinite variety of opinion, because some of us are county men, some are borough men, and some are urban or rural district men.
Most people, I find, believe firmly in the virtues of the particular form of local authority with which they have been most closely associated, but one thing on which we all ought to be agreed is the desire to ensure a strong and independent local government system. Freely-elected local authorities are an essential part of British democracy and a safeguard that we should treasure against the excessive use of central power.
The basic local government structure as we have it in England and Wales today was established seventy or eighty years ago. There is widespread agreement within and without the local government world that the time is ripe for a bold and comprehensive overhaul that should cover functions and finance as well as areas. I am sure that changes in areas should not be made piecemeal but integrated in a general review. That, more than any other consideration, has obliged Ministers, from both sides of the House, in recent years to advise against individual Private Bills for county borough status.
It is over thirty years now since the last county borough was created. In that time some large towns have grown still larger and, naturally, want to look after their own affairs. Many existing county boroughs, under the pressure of expanding employment and new housing, have overspilled into adjacent areas and want to extend their boundaries. County and borough interests clash, and we must resolve them. Then there are the built-up sprawls known by the terrible name of


conurbations, where separate communities have now grown together into what is often a continuous urban mass with common problems but still governed by dozens of separate authorities.
Then, when one turns from the towns to the country one often finds there, too, a pattern of local government more suitable to days gone by, with many districts so small that with their present resources they can hardly hope to grapple effectively enough with all the problems that the rest of the twentieth century will bring. Here, therefore, we have to resolve another clash.
Local government should as far as possible be truly local. Local representatives should know the people they serve and the electors should know their representatives. From this point of view the district council is almost the ideal unit, but strength and independence in a local government system are hard to reconcile with small and financially weak authorities. This is one of the most difficult questions we need to debate.
When the representatives of the local authorities were discussing many of these matters with my predecessor they made the point strongly that organisation should not be considered apart from finance, and I am sure they were right. Local authorities need more independence in the raising and in the spending of their money. Without that no reorganisation of areas and of functions will avail.
I reject the idea of sweeping all the present structure away and putting in its place something quite different which might look tidy on paper, but would lack the traditions and the local roots and the working experience whose value we all of us know. No fanatical reform but thorough overhaul is what we want, and the overhaul should have three main aims: stronger and more convenient local government units; a more rational sharing of local government functions; and a greater local responsibility for what is to be spent or saved.
Three White Papers about England and Wales have been laid before the House, and a fourth about Scotland, on which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Scotland hopes to speak tomorrow. In 1954, my predecessor, now

Minister of Defence, approached the local authority associations of England and Wales to try to resolve the deadlock between those who sought a wide extension of the one-tier system of all-purpose authorities—that is, the county boroughs—and those who believed in the two tiers of county councils and county districts. He brought them to a large measure of agreement, and I pay tribute to the local authority representatives for the way in which they placed the interests of local government as a whole above their own narrower interests. The agreements between them are set out in the Appendix to the first White Paper, that on areas and status, issued just a year ago. It has greatly assisted in the shaping of the Government's proposals.
To review and help to settle the major problems of local government structure, that is, the boundaries of counties and county boroughs and the patterns appropriate in the conurbations, the Government intend to appoint two commissions, one for England and one for Wales. Each of these commissions will be asked to examine the existing structure, to hear the views of all local authorities concerned, and to make recommendations to the Minister for any changes which seem to it to be required. That is the first stage. In the second stage, after the county and county borough pattern has been settled, each county council will be asked to review the areas of its boroughs and districts, and, finally, of its parishes, and to frame recommendations likewise.
I am sure that this is the only practicable procedure. There are fundamental differences between this and the machinery of the old Local Government Boundary Commission which was set up
in 1945 and came to nothing. The Government are intending to deal this time with both structure and functions. These new commissions will not be in the position of being asked to deal with form divorced from purpose. Recommendations from the new commissions will come not, as with the old Boundary Commission, in the form of Orders presented direct to Parliament but as proposals made to the Minister. The Minister will reach conclusions in the light of those recommendations and the Minister will make the necessary Orders and seek Parliamentary approval for them.
There are a number of large authorities who think it is high time they became county boroughs, and some of them have very strong claims. The present position is that boroughs with a population of 75,000 and upwards can promote a Bill for this purpose. A somewhat higher figure is now suggested as the point at which the authority may seek to cut itself loose from the county and become wholly self-governing. The Government propose that a population of 100,000 should be adopted as the level at which an authority—this applies to urban districts as well as to boroughs should be presumed to be competent to discharge all the functions of a county borough.
The commissions will be instructed to deal with claims on that assumption. This does not mean that applications from boroughs or urban districts below that new level will not be considered on their merits. It means simply that at 100,000 there will be an assumption that the town is large enough. There is no disagreement among local authority associations on this proposal. I hope that it will commend itself to the House.
The commissions, looking at this, will be expected to look simultaneously at claims for extension of boundaries by authorities seeking to become county boroughs, and, indeed, to look generally at the likely growth of towns. It is an essential part of our proposals on these matters that they should be firmly settled for a good many years ahead.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: Has the right hon. Gentleman abandoned the figure suggested in the White Paper, that 125,000 population should be required for promotion to county borough status in a conurbation?

Mr. Brooke: I am coming to that in a later part of my speech.
In all questions of promotion to county borough status and extensions of county boroughs there is a potential conflict between the interests of the town and those of the rest of the county. The commission's duty will be to consider the consequences for the county, or, possibly, counties, and to make proposals which will take account of those. In some cases it may prove that the solution lies in adjustment of county areas concurrently with the creation or extension of county boroughs. If so, it will be open to the

commission to recommend that. That is one of the advantages to be gained from a comprehensive procedure.

Mr. J. A. Sparks: Can the right hon. Gentleman say how the main proposal to give county councils power to revise the boundaries of county district councils will be carried out? Will the county district councils be called into consultation before any final scheme is put up by a county?

Mr. Brooke: I was trying to deal with this matter in an orderly way. I have been speaking so far of the commissions' duties. I was coming on to the next stage in a moment, but before reaching that I should like to deal with the conurbations.
I want to try to avoid calling them "conurbations," because I dislike the word so much. I shall call them "special review areas," because that is what they are. [Laughter.] I am not suggesting that that phrase will pass into common parlance, but I am using it for the purpose of my speech because I want to be as clear as I can. That is what they are for our purpose—areas which, prima facie, have common local government problems to the extent that the structure of their local government requires to be looked at as a whole—counties, county boroughs and districts together.
One important issue is where and to what extent co-ordination of services is needed over the whole area. I think it will be generally accepted as right that each of these areas should be reviewed as a whole by the commissions. The White Paper mentions six such areas which were defined by the Registrar-General for census purposes—Greater London, South-East Lancashire, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Merseyside and Tyneside. I will deal with Greater London in a moment. Taking the other five areas, I am certain that special reviews of this kind are needed. There may be other parts of the country which will also need review as a whole, but I think we should leave those to be discovered by the commissions themselves. If it is necessary as a result of the commissions' investigations to add to those five obvious ones, that can be done.
I want to be quite clear to the House about these special review areas.In


each case I have in mind prescribing a definite area for review. We may take an area with boundaries wider than those defined by the Registrar-General, but the prescribing of an area in this way will in no sense be an instruction to the commissions that they must seek to devise a special, new structure of local government for the whole of that area. It is intended simply as a way of drawing their attention to a part of the country which they should look at as a whole and to the possibility that within that area they may find a complex of problems which needs some fairly drastic revision of the existing local government pattern and perhaps some redistribution of functions.
When the commissions have looked at a special review area and consulted all the local authorities concerned, they will then make their recommendations for the pattern of local government which they think will meet the needs. The White Paper mentions some alternative possibilities, but the commissions will be free, having examined each area, to propose whatever structure of local government seems best to them.
Incidentally—here I come to the point raised by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison)—to leave their freedom unfettered I propose to withdraw the stipulation in paragraph 30 of the White Paper that in one of these special review areas the figure for county borough status should be 125,000 instead of the 100,000 provided for elsewhere. I do not think it would be defensible to propose two different figures as a test of fitness for the same thing.
The real point here is that in a special review area other factors will come into play and it may be found that it is convenient to create rather larger urban units than elsewhere. The overall pattern needed in the whole area will be the decisive factor.
Greater London is a unique area——

Mr. Arthur Moyle: Will the figure of 125,000 as the basis for a county borough in a special review area now be replaced by the figure of 100,000?

Mr. Brooke: Yes, that is what I was saying.

Mr. A. E. Cooper: Has my right hon. Friend any upper figure beyond which he would think a unit was too large?

Mr. Brooke: I want to leave the commissions as unfettered as I can, but I thought I should tell the House of that change in our proposals since the White Paper was published.
Greater London is a unique area—not only because of its size, but also because it is the one part of the country where unique kinds of local government already exist. It contains two urban counties. The County of London has a form of government of its own. The County of Middlesex contains not one rural district, but it has the two-tier form of government which was designed originally for rural and semi-rural areas. Adjustments have been made to meet the special Middlesex needs, but I think no one is wholly content, though I commend the very genuine efforts which have been, and, I know, are being, made within Middlesex to reconcile opposing viewpoints.
Around and alongside these two counties are the Metropolitan areas of the Home Counties generally. Here, we find three county boroughs and many county districts of varying sizes, some of which already have a population that would entitle them to aspire to county borough status. These places have a natural affiliation with Greater London, they share various problems in common with London and with Middlesex, but for county administration they look outwards to the county towns of the Home Counties.
No representatives of London local government took part in the discussions which preceded the laying of the first two White Papers, and the general assumption was made that the reorganisation would not apply to the County of London. The 1956 White Paper assumed that the English Local Government Commission would review the whole of the Metropolitan area, excluding the County of London, just as it will review other conurbation areas, and would do the best it could to propose an appropriate structure. But the White Paper added a proviso that the commission would have to consider whether there were any matters needing to be handled jointly on behalf of Greater London as a whole.
It does not now seem to the Government that this approach could produce a satisfactory result. It would mean that the commission had, in practice, to take note of the working of local government inside the County of London as well as outside—but without any mandate to consider the effect on the structure of government within the county of any proposal it might wish to make in fulfilment of its Greater London instructions, including the proviso which I have mentioned.
Then there is another difficulty in the White Paper proposals. It was suggested that no county boroughs should be created within the County of Middlesex. This conclusion was reached because it seemed that in Middlesex there were really only two practicable alternatives—either to have no county boroughs, or to have all county boroughs and to abolish the county. Faced by those alternatives, the Government felt that they must adopt the first. But this is, naturally, not very acceptable to some of the great Middlesex boroughs, and there is no definite proof that it is, in fact, the right course to take. It may be impossible to determine what is the right structure for Middlesex, except in the context of the Greater London area.
The plain fact is that Greater London needs to be looked at as a whole, but there are here such complicated and far-reaching problems that the Government do not think it would be practicable to ask the commission to deal with Greater London as it will deal with the other five areas for special review; and it would gravely hold up all the commission's other work. What is needed is a preliminary and independent and geographically comprehensive examination of the structure of local government suited to the Metropolitan area—which may, of course, be different for different parts of it. Only when we know the answer to that question can we wisely reach conclusions on the boundaries, the status and the functions of the local authorities included within it.

Mr. Sparks: The right hon. Gentleman's remarks about the Middlesex area are a matter of some importance to those of us who represent Middlesex constituencies. Do I understand him to say that the restrictions in respect of Middlesex which he proposed in the White

Paper are now to be withdrawn and that Middlesex will be considered by the commission in conjunction with the whole of the Metropolitan area?

Mr. Brooke: I believe that the hon. Member will find me answering all his questions as I continue with my speech.
The Prime Minister has authorised me to inform the House that Her Majesty the Queen has been pleased to approve his recommendation that a Royal Commission should be appointed. The Royal Commission's task will be to examine the present structure and working of local government in the Greater London area—that is, roughly, the Metropolitan Police District—and to make recommendations about the broad structure appropriate to the area in present conditions and about the distribution of the main local government functions, with special reference to the possible need for an overall authority for any services throughout the whole area. There will be consultation with local authorities on the precise terms of reference, and on the area to be covered.

Mr. G. A. Pargiter: As the Home Counties themselves are affected, can the right hon. Gentleman say whether the review of those counties will proceed independently of the Greater London review? Essex, Surrey, Kent, and so on, are obviously very much affected by this proposal. Can the right hon. Gentleman say how they will be affected by other parts of the White Paper?

Mr. Brooke: These reviews would probably not go forward simultaneously with those within the scope of the Royal Commission's inquiry.

Mr. Mitchison: Is the City of London included?

Mr. Brooke: The best way of proceeding will be for the House to allow us to investigate, to follow up, to have consultation, and to decide the terms of reference in consultation with the local authorities.

Mr. Clement Davies: Can the right hon. Gentleman define what he means by "Greater London"? Does it include the whole of the area taken in by the Abercrombie Plan, or is it smaller than that?

Mr. Brooke: I mean the County of London and, broadly speaking, the Metropolitan Police District. I said that it seems to the Government, in these circumstances, to be right to have consultations with the local authorities concerned before we settle either the precise area, or the precise terms of reference for the Royal Commission.

Mr. Herbert Morrison: I am sorry to interrupt the right hon. Gentleman again; he is getting enough interruptions. He referred to the Royal Commission investigating local government in Greater London, which he defined as approximately the Metropolitan Police District, which is the usual interpretation.
I agree that the Commission's terms of reference are not yet known, but in considering the structure and functioning of local government in that Greater London area, if the Royal Commission proposes changes, will it consider the effect of those changes on administrative counties on the fringe of the Greater London area, if those changes absorb parts of those counties into other areas?
The right hon. Gentleman will realise that the Greater London boundary passes through a number of administrative counties outside London and Middlesex. Will it be possible for the Royal Commission, in making its recommendations, to take into account repercussions on those counties?

Mr. Brooke: I am sure that what the right hon. Gentleman has mentioned will be relevant to the work of the Royal Commission. I hope that the House will feel that the Government have done right, as this was a local government debate, to make this announcement in the course of the debate so that it could proceed in the light of the announcement—although the usual procedure is for the Prime Minister himself to announce a Royal Commission and its full terms of reference at the same time. It is solely for the convenience of the House that we are proceeding in this way.

Mr. C. W. Gibson: Will it include the City Corporation?

Mr. Brooke: It will certainly include the whole area of the County of London.

Mr. H. Morrison: The right hon. Gentleman is in danger of making a technical mistake. The whole area of the County of London excludes the City of London. Did he mean the administrative County of London, which includes the "ancient square mile"? I hope that he did, because I have always had visions of the City of London Corporation absorbing London County Council.

Mr. Brooke: We are not proposing to set up a Royal Commission with any hidden purpose of merging County Hall in Mansion House or Guildhall. or of bringing the City of London more under the control of any other local authority than it is at the moment. I agree that it is part of the geographical area which will have to be considered.
I want to return to the ordinary counties of England and Wales after their boundaries have been reviewed by the commissions and any alterations made by Parliament. The White Paper proposes that each county council will then make a review of the county district pattern in its own county. This is not new. County councils carried out county reviews in the 1930s. The new feature is that in future non-county boroughs will be reviewed and, if necessary, may form the subject of proposals for alteration on the same basis as other county districts. I assure the House that this forms part of the agreed proposals of the local authority associations.
I know that, none the less, the councils of a small number of non-county boroughs up and down the country are very naturally concerned, but I believe that almost everyone recognises that there can be no adequate county reviews unless all districts, whether rural, urban or borough, can be reviewed alike. We cannot aspire to get effective and convenient local government units—convenient in the civic sense—if we are not free to deal as may seem best with all the districts in a county.
I intend that every effort should be made to preserve, as far as possible, the identities and dignities of any boroughs which, as a result of the new proposals, may not remain as separate districts. Where two essentially urban areas merge and one is already a borough, the new unit will normally itself be a borough, but in some cases the best course may be to merge a small borough with a rural


district adjoining. Where that happens, I want to see the borough retain the distinction conferred by its charter and its name of borough, its mayor, and is corporate property.
I am considering a new style of authority. The rural districts which we know are made up of parishes. In future, they can include not only parishes, but what we might call a "rural borough", or "country borough", or some such name, with the mayoralty continued and with a continued corporate existence so that the burgesses can continue to enjoy for their own exclusive benefit the traditions and the corporate property which their predecessors have handed down to them.
These are matters upon which I shall welcome the views of the House, for it is hard to see how ancient boroughs with small populations and low rateable values can wield many powers in the modern world, yet I am very anxious that there shall be no break in their tradition of mayoralty or their historic ceremonies. I understand the apprehensions of the small borough, or for that matter, the small district, at the prospect of losing its identity. I understand their indignation at any suggestion that they are not efficient. Many quite small districts and boroughs are, within their resources, very efficient indeed, but it still may not be efficient to have such a number of authorities in close juxtaposition within an area, and one cannot turn a blind eye to the fact that resources are important.
I know that concern has been aroused by the suggestion in paragraph 50 of the first White Paper that guidance might be given to county councils, when carrying out their reviews, as to the minimum populations desirable for a county district. The view has been put to me that any such guidance will lead county councils to act in a rigid and arbitrary manner, and that they will force unnatural marriages between unsuitable areas. I do not think that this is true. County councils, when considering what is necessary to secure effective and convenient units of local government, will be required to take into account a very wide range of factors—community of interest, accessibility, distribution, of population, and so on—as set out in what has become known in local government circles as the "nine factors."
No county council would pay attention exclusively to population: certainly, no

Minister would accept proposals which ignored all the other factors involved. My belief still is that some indication of the sort of size at which county councils should aim when considering these reviews of their districts will be found necessary if we are to get good reviews. The experience of the last series of county reviews, when no clear and specific guidance was given on this subject, suggests to me that something more than general exhortation is necessary. Let me say definitely that I am sure that no figure could be hard and fast, and I am sure that some small boroughs and small districts will continue.
The second White Paper, published in May, deals with distribution of local government functions between county and county district councils. The functions discussed in it are those chosen by the associations themselves as needing consideration. The associations were not in agreement on all the specific changes which should be made, so the Government invited fire from both sides by putting forward proposals of their own, in this White Paper, as a basis for discussion.
I said that local government should as far as possible be truly local. It was with that general aim that the Government approached this review. But right away I want to say, frankly, that there are limits to what is practicable in the direction of taking responsibilities from the county councils and giving them to the district councils. The problem is an obvious one; how to reconcile a shift of responsibility downwards with the present-day needs for substantial financial resources and for what I might call large catchment areas.
It is not easy to see how to effect the reconciliation without impairing the interests of the services themselves. The proposals in the White Paper represent a valuable step forward; borough and urban districts with populations of 60,000 and upwards should be able to claim the responsibility for nearly all the services listed in this White Paper. This means that the large borough or urban district can have a real say in the administration of education and local health and welfare services. These are the most important of all. They intimately affect people's daily lives, so they ought to be run as locally as possible. This is a major


change and I believe that it will be greatly welcomed by the councils concerned.
I know that it has been argued that some of these services should be conferred on the large districts as of right, and not delegated from the county councils. This is one of the matters arising out of the White Paper upon which local authority associations have been having discussions with Ministers, but as far as the major services are concerned—education, health and welfare, roads and planning—we are firm in our adherence to what was said in paragraph 10 of the White Paper, that delegation in one form or another is inescapable for these services, and that the county council must remain responsible for broad policy and general finance.
I know that delegation does not invariably work well, though I believe that, given the right spirit on both sides, there is no reason why it should not do so. The Government intend to do everything they can to see that it does work well by ensuring that any delegation arrangements which are made are as definite and as unfettered as possible.
The view has been put to me that the figure at which there is automatic delegation should be lower than 60,000. I know that many of the middle-sized districts would have liked the figure of 50,000 or possibly less, so that they could be sure of sharing directly in education and in local health and welfare administration. I do not think that we can go below the figure of 60,000. There can be no precision in a matter of this kind, but the Government's view is that a figure lower than 60,000 could not safely be taken for general application.
But that does not mean that no authorities with a population below 60,000 will get these powers. Where special circumstances justify it the powers will be delegated to districts with a somewhat smaller population. All existing excepted districts will continue to exercise delegated education functions, whatever their populations.
I have been speaking mainly of the major services, such as education and health. Some of the other services will be exercised by a larger range of district councils—larger, certainly, than has been supposed by many people who have read the White Paper too restrictively. I want

also to tell the House about some modifications of the White Paper which we have in mind. On some of the functions in question—weights and measures, for example—the Government are now disposed to suggest that responsibility should be directly conferred upon district councils with populations of 60,000 and over, instead of being delegated.
On two of the other functions—classified roads and food and drugs—we shall probably not proceed with the proposals contained in the White Paper, and will be suggesting that the present arrangements might be left substantially as they are, except that in the case of roads the field in which the claiming system would continue to operate would be reviewed.
We are not anxious for uniformity for its own sake; we are not seeking to impose delegation upon services for which it is not essential. Throughout the discussions with the local authority associations on functions we have tried to look at the needs of the individual service. The modifications that I have already indicated to the House are the result. We shall welcome further debate for, in the last resort, it is Parliament which must delicately hold the balance here between the counties and the county districts. The present distribution of functions between them is not particularly rational. I think that the changes that we have proposed are steps in the right direction.
One matter about which people have asked me is the relationship of the new towns to all this. That raises the question whether the ownership of all the land and buildings in the new towns when the development corporations disappear is really a suitable function for local government to discharge and, if so, for what sort of authorities. Several of the corporations established in England and Wales under the New Towns Act will have substantially completed their tasks in the next few years. The Government have been independently examining this matter and have reached the conclusion that it would not be the best plan to transfer wholesale to local authorities the ownership of the properties which are now in the hands of the corporations.
We propose, instead, to establish a new agency to take over the property and liabilities of the corporations in England and Wales as they are wound up. This will, of course, all require legislation.


Meanwhile, the Government are examining a number of questions relating to the organisations and functions of the proposed agency. There will be consultations on these questions with local authority representatives and with other expert opinion. The local authorities of the new town areas are, and will continue to be, responsible for all normal local government services just as similar authorities are elsewhere.
The only exceptions to this have been in a few cases water supply and, I think in a majority of cases, main sewerage. Now that that phase of early development is over, the aim of the Government will be to ensure that in new town areas responsibility for those services passes to the normal local authorities as soon as suitable arrangements can be made.
If the House will bear with me, I want now to speak of local government finance. I said that local authorities need to be more independent both in the raising and spending of their money; and unless we can increase this financial independence, no reorganisation of areas and functions will be really effective. I wish we could propose a new source of revenue which would enable local authorities to finance their services with substantially less reliance on Exchequer aid. No doubt my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer wishes it even more than I do. But most hon. Members will not be surprised when I say that it is simply not practicable.
This subject of alternative sources of local government finance has been studied by a group formed by the Royal Institute of Public Administration, and their study was exhaustive. Their main conclusions were for a local personal income tax and for transfer to local authorities of entertainments duties and perhaps also the motor duty. A local income tax has its own technical difficulties. Even apart from those difficulties it is not a prospect to attract one. The suggestion was that it should be limited to 3d. in the£, but the House knows what can happen to an income tax once it is started.
As for switching to local authorities the product of some of the taxes now collected nationally, this could only be of real assistance to local government. I think, if local authorities were free to

alter the level locally. That, again, is not a prospect which attracts one. I wonder just how many individual areas would have been unselfish enough to take Entertainments Duty off sport and the living theatre.
If it is merely a question of diverting to local authorities the product of taxes settled nationally, surely it is better to do it according to the needs of the authorities rather than according to the local yield of each tax. I think that any Government which investigates all this will be forced to accept that the main sources of finance for local authorities must remain what they are at present—that is to say, the rates, their own rents and revenues and the Exchequer grants; so it is with rates and with grants that the Government have to deal.
The main rating adjustment which we propose is the rerating of industry and freight transport by 50 per cent. Industry's share of the total rate payments rose by half as much again by reason of the 1956 revaluation. Rerating from 25 per cent. to 50 per cent, on top of that, will, therefore, have the result that as compared with the year 1955–56, industry's share will have increased about threefold. The Government have thoroughly considered this and have come to the conclusion that in the economic circumstances, and keeping in mind export costs, that is as heavy an addition to overheads as industry can safely be required to bear. It is estimated to produce, on present figures, an extra£30 million a year in rate income. It permanently and materially increases the rateable value of local authorities on which they are free to levy whatever rate they think fit.
I should mention also the proposal to bring the rate contributions of the electricity and transport industries within the rating system, as the gas industry contributions already are; and the proposal to assess separately electricity and gas showrooms which are used as shops, on the same lines as other shop premises. Local government means, or should mean, local responsibility. Subject to national standards, certainly, with central government assistance, certainly. But, ultimately, local choice to determine how best to spend one's money and local responsibility for reckoning the cost. All this is fundamental to our ideas for the future of local government. It points towards more


genuine local discretion, and it is local discretion of this sort that has, in past days, been the source of some of the most worthwhile advances in local government services.
Of course, it is right that adequate central Government assistance shall continue to whatever extent it is needed, but let us be sure that this assistance is in a form which does not reduce the local authority to the status of a mere agent of the central government. The position today discloses one weakness after another. That is why local government is not what it was. Local authorities are now receiving more from the taxpayer than they get from the rates. Most of it comes not as a straight contribution to local resources as a whole, but as a regulated sharing by the Exchequer in specific local expenditure. Local government is in danger of getting assistance as a dependant gets assistance—on dictated terms.
Whereas, before the last war, 65 per cent. of all Exchequer aid to local authorities was made by specific grants for particular services, today it is not 65 per cent., but 85 per cent. Then there were 35 specific grants, now there are no fewer than 60. The worst feature from the standpoint of local autonomy is that of the money total of grants now given from the Exchequer to local authorities, two-thirds is in the form of percentage grants. The local authority spends the money knowing that whatever it spends, so much per cent. will automatically be reimbursed by the Exchequer. The Government Departments seeking to watch the taxpayer's interest inevitably have to "keep tabs" on each local authority's spending, not just when the spending is planned, but, even more, when the accounts are reckoned up.
There is very little rhyme or reason for the way grants are available for particular services today. They came into being at various times, because of particular needs, or pressures, at those times, and in relation to some only of the great range of local government services and not others. A town council may face a need for heavy expenditure on sewage or refuse disposal. It can get no direct Exchequer assistance towards it, but public opinion requires the job to be done. If it is considering expenditure, possibly of a much less essential nature, on some other

service which happens, more or less by historical accident, to attract a percentage grant, Exchequer assistance will be automatically forthcoming.
Even within the field that is grant-aided, the amount of grant which can be made available in different circumstances differs markedly on no national principle. The unhappy result is that expenditure on one particular service rather than on another may be much more attractive or, at any rate, much less burdensome in its effect upon the ratepayers, not necessarily because of the merits or costs of that service, but simply because it happens to rank for a high rate of Exchequer grant, whereas the other ranks for less grant or none at all.
It is said by some critics of the White Paper that the disadvantages of the percentage grant system are exaggerated and that it has not in practice led to an excessive degree of central Government checking of local authority operations or to any risk of a reduced sense of' independence and responsibility in local authorities. The Lees Report of the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants is, I know, quoted in support of that.
Well, it would be nice to take this as a compliment to the enlightened way in which Government Departments administer a complicated system. What we really have to go by is the number, range and complexity of the accounts that have to be prepared, scrutinised and discussed. These amount to thousands and thousands a year, which hardly looks a good thing when everybody is saying that there ought to be fewer officials and not more. As for the sense of financial responsibility among local authorities, everybody will have his own opinion, but all of us who have served on local authorities know perfectly well that we cannot but look differently at a plan of which we must meet the whole cost and a plan of which we need meet only half or less and can get other people to pay the remainder, without their knowing that they are doing so.
The Government now propose that the cornerstone of the structure of Exchequer aid should, in future, be a general grant. Percentage grants will only be retained when the general grant cannot be made to fit the needs. It is a big step towards increasing the financial freedom of local


authorities, and it is welcome—[Laughter]. I say that it is welcome to thoughtful people throughout local government. It conforms with the aims on this side of the House of leaving as much as possible of the detailed management of local services to the local authorities themselves.
The general grant will be based not on the amount each council spends, but upon objective factors outside the control of the individual local authority and related to the needs of the area. It will absorb and replace as many of the existing specific grants as can suitably he included. We are not trying to force anything into this new pattern that will not fit it. Housing, highways and police will not be affected. The general grant will replace those mentioned in paragraph 16 of the White Paper.
These which are replaced are running at nearly£300 million a year. Their absorption into the general grant will mean that, in future, Exchequer assistance to local authorities will consist only as to one-third of specific grants instead of about seven eighths as at present. The Opposition will find themselves on weak ground if they try to argue that a general grant will hamper the development of social services like health and education. [Laughter.] Well, let us look the kind of things which have been said.
One suggestion is that the Government mean to freeze the Exchequer grants at or around the existing level, leaving local authorities to bear the cost of existing services. Another suggestion is that even if the Government produce a fair contribution local authorities will not spend the necessary money on the necessary things unless they have the stimulus of percentage grants.
The first point simply is not true, and anyone who repeats it is uttering an untruth. Just as with the existing arrangement, so under the proposed new system, the level of grant will rise if the cost of the services has to rise. As a matter of fact, the new system will provide a much more orderly way of assessing and determining the amount of development to be planned. The general grant for the first period of two years will be determined in the autumn of 1958, in readiness for its commencement in April, 1959. It will be determined by reference to the latest information about

the levels of costs and grants, to the need for development of the services concerned and to the nation's capacity to meet the cost.
In 1958, and on subsequent occasions, the fixing of the total grant in this way by Order will give rise to debate in Parliament, presumably, and will attract a good deal of public attention. It will be something on to which serious attention in the Press and among the public at large can be much more effectively focused than the separate grants which are at present provided. It will give an opportunity for the Government to show clearly, and for the public to see clearly, just what aid from the taxes is being given and will be given to the services concerned. I am certain that the procedure to which the Government are committing themselves is not what anyone would devise whose sole aim was secretly to save the taxpayer at the expense of the ratepayer.
On the second point, that local authorities will not fulfil their responsibilities unless that is the only condition on which they can get Government money, I am sorry that hon. Members opposite have so little faith in public opinion and local government. Education is being cited as in particular danger. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education will have something to say about that point later.
I simply do not accept that councillors are so reckless towards their responsibilities, so indifferent to the next council elections, and so careless of every consideration except the rates, that unless they are compelled by Whitehall to spend money they are certain to let their children, their sick people and their old people suffer, or, at any rate, suffer by comparison with those in other areas. If that were true, we had better abolish local government and have done with it; but it is not true, and the House knows that it is not true.
These services have been developed by local authorities. Many of the most valuable new ideas have come from local authorities. Locally elected people do not, whatever hon. Gentlemen opposite may say, need to be told all the time by some Minister or other what they ought to do and how they ought to do it. They need powers, resources and freedom to exercise some initiative of their own, and


these are what the Government intend to give them.
The Government are not proposing to abandon their legitimate concern with the operation of the various services. Departments will continue to exercise control at the key points, but a Minister's responsibility for general policy ought not to entail meticulous scrutiny of the detailed management of a service. It is one thing to prescribe basic standards, as Governments will continue to do wherever that is necessary; it is another thing to dictate in detail the methods by which those standards are to be achieved and maintained. That is what the Government want to get rid of; and whatever the Opposition may say I know that the local authorities want to be rid of it, too.
We shall have absorbed as many as practicable of the specific grants into the general grant and shall have abolished several others. It will be important for the future that we do not proliferate new specific grants except for good reason. When, in future, Parliament feels that extra financial provision should be made for local government, the first assumption should be that it should be added to the total of the general grant. If the addition is made because of new duties put upon local authorities and these duties are nation-wide, then the assumption will be very strong indeed that the general grant is the proper vehicle, possibly with some amending of the factors governing its distribution. Legislation would then take the form of extending the list of services for which the general grant makes financial provision, and the total of the general grant would be suitably increased.
Only if the new activity is confined to particular areas ought the case for a specific grant to be pressed. For example, that would have been the case with smoke-control areas under the Clean Air Act. Other activities may come along, perhaps arising from some important inquiry as the clean air campaign did, but even in this sort of case the time may arrive when the service becomes general and the burden on local authorities can be related to defined factors applying to them all. When that happens, the specific grant can be absorbed into the general grant.
I will not, unless the House wishes it, go deeply into the technicalities of the formula by which the general grant is proposed to be distributed amongst different local authorities. It has been much improved as a result of detailed discussions with representatives of local authorities and I am grateful for their help. The major factor in it, common to all local authorities, is population, but there are other factors, too.
The White Paper, by way of illustration, gives, in Annex C, an indication of the values that ought to be attached to these various factors to produce a particular total of general grant. Those values will need to be varied according to the total amount to be distributed. They may, therefore, be different in each grant period, but—initially, at any rate—the weight attaching to any particular factor will be broadly as indicated in the illustration given.
I want the House to realise that the weight of these factors will be reviewed for each grant period, along with the total of grant. Both will be embodied in a statutory Order. The total amount of grant will, as the White Paper points out in paragraphs 18 to 20, be fixed after taking into account the complete picture of local government needs, and views, and current spending, and the position of the economy as a whole. Those three paragraphs deserve to be carefully read, for they invalidate a great deal of the rather facile criticism by people who were hastier to put their objections on record than to study what the Government actually propose.
Over and above their share of the general grant, many authorities will also receive equalisation grants, which is rather a misleading name, with a smack of levelling down as well as levelling up; and with the agreement, I think, of the local authority associations we propose to call it henceforward rate deficiency grant. The Exchequer comes in to make good any shortfall in local rateable resources below the national average. Hon. Members may be impatient with some of this jargon. So am I, but I believe it is unavoidable on this subject.

Mr. W. R. Williams: I thought it was bad, that is all.

Mr. Brooke: There is more to this change than a mere change of name [HON. MEMBERS: "Hear, hear."] I thought that these particular changes were welcomed.
The complete list of them is set out in Annex D to the White Paper. I shall refer to only one of them now, one of which I thought everybody, or almost everybody, approved. Hitherto, these grants have been paid only to county councils and county borough councils. The grant to county councils has been paid not only on the county expenditure, but also on the expenditure of county districts. The county districts receive what are known as capitation payments, but these are based on unweighted population and take no account of differences in rateable resources. One of the chief defects of the existing arrangements is that they take no account of the variations in rate resources within a county, which can often be very significant. That is why we propose to revise the system so that county districts may qualify directly for rate deficiency grants on their own rate resources and their own expenditure. They will, of course, no longer receive capitation payments.
I come now to what some people tell me, strangely enough, is the least popular of the Government's proposals—the proposal to effect some reduction in the total of Exchequer grants to local authorities. I say "strangely enough" because one might imagine that any attempt to relieve the taxpayer would be universally popular. In this topsy-turvy world, apparently, that is not so.
I explained that the rerating of industry will produce about an extra£30 million of rate revenue a year, on present figures. About half of this sum will be lost to the Exchequer by reduced tax yields from industry; and I would not suppose than even hon. Members opposite would dispute that the Government should reduce the amount being distributed through grants by at least that amount—that is, by£15 million of reduced tax yield. In view of the immense burdens on the taxpayer—which have increased five or six-fold since 1939—there is a strong case for reducing the Exchequer grants by the full£30 million.
That, of course, would leave the position of ratepayers, other than industry, undisturbed, and also would leave the

total revenue of local authorities unaltered. But it is recognised that there are difficulties inherent in the transition from specific grants to a general grant, and the Government have concluded that it would be right on this occasion to ensure that, as a result of all these changes, local authorities should gain£10 million a year overall. That is twice what the Exchequer—in other words, the taxpayer—will gain on balance.
The effect on individual local authorities of all these changes will be that most will gain. But some will lose. For this reason the scheme embodies special transitional arrangements. Those rating authorities who are found to lose as a result of the changes proposed will have their losses entirely made good in the first year, 1959–60, and the fund required for this purpose will be provided in appropriate proportions by the authorities that gain. In the second year, 1960–61, the losses will be made good in the same way, but as to 90 per cent. instead of 100 per cent. In the next year, 1961–62, we shall be seeing the effects of the next revaluation. No one can forecast how large those effects may be. There may then have to be special consideration of further arrangements to be made for tempering losses on grant; but the intention is that contributions towards these losses should be tapered off over a period.
In talking of gains and losses, I have not taken account of the substantial benefit which local authorities are to receive from the general grant becoming eventually payable in full within the year to which it relates; this is the point referred to in paragraph 21 of the White Paper. It does not, of course, mean extra money for local authorities; it simply means that they will not be kept waiting for their money, but they will find more in the till each year while the payments are being brought up to date. It does entail an extra charge on the Budget—estimated to be of an order of£40 million—and I have agreed with the Chancellor, therefore, that the change will be brought into effect gradually.
Finally, because I know how much importance the local authorities attach to it, I invite the attention of the House to paragraph 5 of the White Paper, where reference is made to a review of controls. The Government have readily acceded to the request of local authorities to have


this review carried out. We believe that control over local government services by Whitehall should only be at key points, and that the changes we are proposing in the grant structure will provide opportunity for a genuine reduction of other controls. We propose to take this opportunity to carry out a review of all controls, whether associated with the grant system or not; and discussions with the representatives of local authorities for this purpose are to begin very shortly. I give the House an undertaking that this review will be thorough, and that we shall be prepared to abolish or relax any controls over the freedom of local authorities to act as they think best, which cannot be shown to serve a useful purpose.
I have spoken separately about the three aspects of local government reorganisation—areas and status, functions and finance—but they are all bound up with each other, and the proposals that the Government are making under any one head are linked with the other proposals, too. I come back to our three main aims: stronger local authorities; discharge of local government functions at the point at which it can most efficiently and conveniently be done; and an adjustment to the system for bearing the costs of local government, which will give local councils not only a more equitable share in financial assistance but also a greater degree of responsibility and—over and above the maintenance of national minimum standards—practical freedom of choice, in planning and paying for the services they want.
I ask the House to examine these proposals all together, nationally and not parochially. From my own experience I believe that if Parliament fails to seize this opportunity to recast our local government system so that it may flourish afresh, the chance may not come a second time.

Mr. Pargiter: If the three are bound together, will the Minister explain why the proposals in respect of local government finance and the date of their operation must be taken separately? If it is 'the Minister's case that all three are bound together, I should have thought that the operation of the financial proposals would coincide with the reorganisation.

Mr. Brooke: We are seeking to introduce a Bill in the next Session of Parliament so that our plans may generally come into effect on 1st April, 1959.

6.21 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: May I begin by saying that, like the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Housing and Local Government, I do not propose to deal with the Scottish White Paper. On the cover it bears a Latin translation of the well-known words, "Wha' daur meddle wi' me." I propose to take the hint.
As to the other three White Papers, it seems to me that they are not the kind of summer salad which I had hoped for at the end of July, but three remarkably stodgy plum puddings, rather ill-digested, a bit out of season and full of fruit of doubtful origin and uncertain effect. Moreover, when I look for the threepenny pieces which we always hope to find in a plum pudding, I find only one, whereas the cook took from me, or rather from the local authorities, some little time ago, three threepenny pieces in connection with shops and offices. He has put two in his pocket and one back in the plum pudding. I do not think that that is quite good enough.
The cook has not appeared much in these proceedings. He is the Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Minister of Housing and Local Government is bringing in the plum puddings in his capacity of head waiter for the moment and he has covered them with liquor in the usual way and set light to them. He told us, "This is the heady liquor of liberty". Believe me, it is not. It is that old concoction, taken out of a bottle, called "Tory Freedom", and those who think that it is the real stuff—and quite a lot have thought that—will suffer from drinking it.
Let me turn to these three White Papers. Giving a more sober presentation of them, I repeat that they seem to me to be a confused and somewhat dishonest statement of policy. I say dishonest because I believe that the main motive of the Government here has been to introduce a general grant for the purpose of limiting Exchequer expenditure, knowing perfectly well that the main effect of the introduction of that general grant is bound to be a reduction in education expenditure and the cramping of


education initiative. After all, this general grant covers only a limited number of services and, to take the figures which the Government have given us, out of a total of£298 million no less than£260 million is in respect of education services.
I cannot resist the conclusion that a Tory Government, unwilling to do too much openly by way of curtailing education expenditure, have found this is a not inconvenient method of approaching the same object. I shall say more about that, but I do not think that I have exaggerated what the effect of this appears to be, not only to hon. Members on this side of the House but to all those concerned with the present and the future of education all over the country. The Minister out up many criticisms which he phrased himself and then, in his own phrases, proceeded to knock them down. He made little mention of the quarter from which far the most severe and far the most widespread criticism has come.
Let us see what has happened. First, we had a very considerable measure of agreement, promoted, I agree, by the right hon. Gentleman's predecessor, between the local authority associations on areas and status, subject at that stage to some reservations about functions and, in one instance, to a specific mention of finance. Since the right hon. Gentleman has taken charge of these matters there have been some notable rifts in the lute, and there is certainly not much agreement now.
It started. I think, with the substitution of what is called compulsory delegation for conferment. That upset the municipal corporations. To some extent it upset the urban districts, too. Then "functions" appeared, and on that the municipal corporations expressed profound dissatisfaction, partly for the reason which I have given and partly for another reason. I will not go through it all in detail, but the agreement on these matters has disappeared except on a few points. If the Government intended to divide and rule they have certainly had some measure of success in doing so.
What is the result? Are we to get their agreement on finance? The position seems to me to be that all the local authorities—as far as I can see—object to the rerating proposals as unfair and

insufficient. They all make the proposition of a general grant dependent or satisfactory decontrol, if I may use a word which in another sense must have unfortunate connotations with the right hon. Gentleman. They do not know what decontrol they will get. They have agreed the proposals, and that is how the matter stands.
I will not go through every point. I expect to be shot at by my hon. Friends this evening for talking too much rubbish and I shall certainly be shot at if I do it for too long. If I do not cover every point, therefore, right hon. and hon. Members opposite will be thankful that, at any rate, I have not spoken for as long as I should have done had I tried to deal with every point. Speaking most seriously. I know that many hon. Members wish to speak in this debate. If I may misquote John Bright and refer to the voice of the parish pump, "I can hear it all over the land and its wings can be detected in every council chamber in the country." I am sure that we shall get quite a bit of that from all of us before we have finished, but I will try to keep away from it as much as I can.
Turning to the question of areas and status, I understand that there is to be one commission for England, one for Wales, and no more. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman will later be able to tell us—or get someone else to tell us—whether the commissions will be so constituted that they can function in sub-commissions, because it seems to me that they have a great deal to do. At any rate, the commissions' main duties are to deal with the question of conurbations and to deal with the creation—I do not think that I am mistaken in calling it the creation—-and extension of county boroughs.
There is to be a presumed right to county borough status of any district with a population of 100,000 or more. The right hon. Gentleman is well aware, and, indeed, he has put it into the White Paper, that the creation of county boroughs on that scale by itself, coupled with the suggestion that some conurbations could be dealt with by setting up a number of county boroughs inside them, will put many of the county councils most seriously at risk.
I make this comment on that at this stage. I think that that must be looked at


in the light of two functions of the county councils which they ought to have and which are vitally important. One is general town and country planning for their areas and the other is the educational programme. I do not say that this ought never to be done. I say, however, that it is a very difficult business indeed to do without upsetting those two very vital functions of the county councils.
As to the conurbations, I regret the way in which this has been left. I listened to what the right hon. Gentleman had to say. Leaving out London and Middlesex, upon which I shall have a word to say in a moment, he starts with the Registrar-General's five conurbations which, I would remind the House, contain 20 per cent. of the population. They are no small matter.
The Commission—there is really only one commission concerned with this—is to have power to add to these five and then, as regards the five, presumably, and any others suggested by the Commission, the right hon. Gentleman is to prescribe the area; but he is to do so only for the purpose of drawing the attention of the Commission to the area so that it can find the appropriate area of the administrative conurbation within it. Having done that, it is free to propose whatever pattern suits it best. I merely point this out. This leaves matters completely uncertain in respect of the boundaries and, indeed, the number of the conurbations until the Commission has finished its job. It may at any time have power to add or suggest additions, which the right hon. Gentleman may accept, to the five conurbations.
The area within each of these five or any other conurbations which have to be dealt with as such will depend on the Commission's findings, and we still do not know what power the Commission will have to reject one of the five conurbations altogether. Perhaps the most obvious case is Tyneside where, without coming to any conclusion in the matter, I would point out to the right hon. Gentleman that there is some doubt whether it ought to be a conurbation or not. The County of Northumberland, for instance, might have very strong views on the matter, because it will make a very large difference to its area and population.
I now turn to one other point of the proposals for conurbations. This will lead me to London. There is a suggestion in paragraph 42 of the White Paper about co-ordinating services. That is a vague phrase, but I think that I know what is intended. Again, on the question of planning and, even more, on the question of housing and industrial development, it seems to me that these services inevitably go beyond the conurbation itself. That is why there is overspill, and why we had the new towns.
Incidentally, I think that we ought to have some more new towns. I would suggest that if this matter were properly tackled we ought to have for services of this kind—and off hand it is only those two that occur to me specifically—some real sort of regional basis rather than a limited one to cover a conurbation or to cover counties. It seems to me that dealing with the unhousable population—unhousable for reasons of space—in some of our big towns is becoming an absolutely insuperable problem unless we are prepared to go a good deal further with it than we have been so far.
We ought not to have any limitations of services within, say, the south-east Lancashire conurbation, which will prevent Manchester going a good hit further afield than any likely limits of that actual conurbation. The right hon. Gentleman will notice that I have not accepted his form of rechristening for a moment. I am accustomed to the term "conurbation" and "special review areas" seems to be rather like the subject of military reorganisation. I think that for the moment I will keep to conurbation. I say to the right hon. Gentleman that he ought to be more definite with the House about what he proposes to do, first, on the question of conurbations and the Commission's geographical powers in relation to them, and secondly, on what he really has in mind about large area services of the type that I have mentioned.
There is one other thing. I do not like leaving these very wide questions entirely to the local government commission. I think that that is going rather too far. I merely say that at this stage. I quite agree that there ought, of course, to be local inquiries, local consultations, and so on, but if a decision is going to be reached on these matters, which. I


repeat, affect one-fifth of the population of the country, I hope that we shall be allowed to express our views on it in this House before it has reached too concrete a form and before it has become something which binds the Government too definitely.
I want to say one or two words about London and Middlesex. I shall say very little, because a Royal Commission is to be appointed. Everyone recognises the particular complexity of the problem. It is an extraordinarily difficult business. I am quite certain that the Royal Commission is bound to take some little time in doing its job. That, of course, will mean that the Greater London problem will be put on the plate of the next Labour Government, like quite a number of other things, and I am sure that we shall take better care of it than the present Government would. At heart, we would not hesitate to exclude any such interesting examples of high rateable value as the City of London from the conurbation.
I was very much impressed, as I always am on matters of this sort, by what my right hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison)said about that. It seems to me absolutely vital that the Royal Commission, in considering London, should not be restricted geographically. What it has to consider are the problems of Greater London, and it will not find a solution for many of them inside Greater London. It will have to consider the position in relation to the neighbouring counties.
I turn to another matter, still on the areas and status part of the proposals. This is what I call the elimination of small county districts—because, as I see it, that is what the right hon. Gentleman has in mind—partly by the exercise of the existing powers of county councils, and partly by their extension to non-county boroughs—subject, I agree, to some safeguards that are stated in the White Paper.
I agree with the local authority associations in finding the suggestion of a minimum population suspect. We are told that there are nine factors. That is well and good, but why pick on one of them to make a suggestion about it which tends to give it a leading place? There it is, but I do not particularly like it and, whatever is done about it, I hope that the

other factors will be carefully considered both in any instructions, circulars, or the like, and when it comes to practice.
There is something else. I mentioned just now that many county councils will really be at risk because of the formation of new county boroughs and, possibly, because of the treatment of conurbations. That being the position, those county councils will have to decide which small county districts ought to disappear and which ought to survive. I do not altogether like the idea that the county councils, which now, because of these other proposals, have a rather special interest in the matter, should be the sole arbiters.
It might have some very odd results on their own powers. It might raise the question of the county councils' survival if they decided it in one way or another. Though I hasten at once to pay my tribute to those who serve on county councils, as on other local authorities, it is a little difficult to be impartial when the future of one's own council may be involved.
That leads me to another question closely connected with it, and that is functions. The original suggestion was that there should be a distinct conferment—I use the word that is used—of certain functions on county districts. That is the form the suggestion took, at any rate, in the text of the first of these White Papers, but the county councils, as I understand, said, "We cannot have that. We must have compulsory delegation."
What is the difference? The difference, as I see it—reading the White Paper—is that that gives the county councils control of what is called broad policy. I wonder how broad policy has to be before it becomes broad policy? What does the phrase mean? It seems to me to be a rather vague one—and vague in circumstances where it would be very advisable to be more precise. The second matter over which the county councils desired to retain control was, in appropriate places, finance.
One has to remember that delegation has had a rather unfortunate history. It has too often been the case that county councils called upon to delegate, delegated the minimum. I agree with the right hon. Gentleman on one point, that, subject to efficiency, the nearer one can


get to the individual citizen by the form of local authority, the better. Therefore, I start with a prejudice, if I may say so, in favour of the smaller, more accessible and, in that sense, more human local authorities.
I really wonder whether compulsory delegation means the reservation of some effective powers by the county councils which they ought really to transfer, or whether, in fact, it is simply a rather confused, compromise phrase for something that will, in the long run, amount to conferment. The right hon. Gentleman will see that, so far, though I may be critical, I am not very combative. We will come to that part later.
Next, we are asked to draw a rather sharp line for a population of 60,000 plus. This is for the purpose of compulsory delegation—or of what is called somewhere else, automatic right to delegation—from county councils to county districts. There are 1,356 county districts, and I understand that only 55 of them will benefit from that compulsory delegation; and there are five rural districts that are in a sort of intermediate position.
Therefore, although it is an important matter, the great majority of the county districts, and the great majority of the people living in the county districts will be concerned with the other, discretionary delegation that is also mentioned. I wonder whether this distinction in this form is really worth making? As I have said, it does not affect the majority of even the district councils or their inhabitants. Its effect seems to be—, and here I differ from the right hon. Gentleman—on the medium-sized county districts of between, say, about 30,000 and 60,000 population. They have to suffer for it and, on balance, have lost rather than gained by the proposals in the White Paper about functions.
I cannot help feeling that this creation of most-purpose authorities or, if it is preferred, second-grade county boroughs, or, if it is preferred, super-county districts—let hon. Members take their choice—has really been a rather half-hearted and confused idea for which the great run of county districts will have to suffer. I would ask the House to remember this, and I agree that I say it with a little constituency feeling but, I hope, not too

much—I want to keep the parish pump as quiet as possible when I am talking.
I think that these units of between about 30,000 and 60,000 inhabitants really are, as a rule, rather efficient, and that, socially, they are desirable. I should be sorry if, as a result of these proposals, they should find themselves delegated one grade down in the pecking order of local authorities, and rather pruned of their previous functions or, at any rate, not receiving as much as they really might and could carry out. There are points in that connection about highways but, by and large, they are being left over, so I say no more about them at the moment.
Now we come to a very remarkable matter. There is a sport now of butchering the Lord Privy Seal's babies. It goes on continually. The "pots and pans" tax was half-killed the other day, and there is a baby buried as a result of this White Paper. Divisional executives for educational purposes disappear in one sentence—without reason given, without argument adduced. I think that that is a bit unkind. There are about 150 of these babies, and if we take the population in the administrative counties, which amounts to about 27½ million, nearly 13 million live in divisional executive areas and only about 4 million, I may add, in excepted districts.
Allowing for the delegation arrangements for the areas with populations of over 60,000, the net result will be that about 11/ million people who lived in what I might call divisional executive areas before, will see those divisional executives disappear overnight. I attach no exaggerated importance to them. I know that opinions about them differ and I know, too, that the divisional executives themselves differ. They often—in fact, usually—cover something rather more than a single local authority area. In fact, out of the 150 I mentioned, 100 actually cover a population of more than 60,000.
If we are to have the same sort of standard as we applied to the local authority unit, there seems to be a case for something being left out of that 100. If we take the view, as I do, that the 60,000 figure, if we are to take it at all, is too high and reduce it, say, to 50,000, we


cover an even larger number of divisional executives on the same standard. I express no strong view about it. Indeed, I think it is a matter which affects the north of England rather more than the south, but I do know many cases where I am told that these divisional executives have done very well, and I had a most pathetic letter this morning from the Kettering Divisional Executive in which it considered its own impending extinction and was, on the whole, against it—not a surprising conclusion.
It will not have escaped the attention of the House that the Amendment that I shall move shortly relates entirely to the financial proposals in these White Papers. That is not because we have not got some objections to the other proposals, but because our objections to the financial ones are very much more marked. I do not believe that the Government or hon. Members opposite fully appreciate the financial difficulties of local authorities at present. They are faced, in the first place, with steadily mounting costs—the Government's inflationary policy, or their failure to combat inflation, whichever one likes to call it; they are steadily mounting costs which the Government cannot control.
If we take the principal service affected by this general grant proposal, more than half of the educational expenditure of local authorities is on teachers' salaries. They cannot control that. Again, if we look in the national income and expenditure figures for 1955, and look at Table 40 which gives the local authority expenditure on these various services, we find in "Goods and Services," matters that by and large are not in the local authorities' control, a steep increase so that now after eight years—the latest figure here is for 1954—they were 13 times what they were at the beginning of the eight years. Meanwhile, education, by far the largest of them, had actually become 21 times what it was at the beginning of those eight years.
If we look now at the Ministry of Education's comments on the Estimates, to be found in Cmd. 99, there is a table of what they expect to happen in the period that follows that period in this national income and expenditure book, and they compare the year 1954–55 with the estimated expenditure for 1957–58. There will be an increased expenditure

on primary schools of£50 million in three years. That is an increase of about 30 per cent. Secondary schools will be up£42 million, an even greater percentage increase. The whole expenditure will actually rise from£377 million by£183 million to£560 million. That is very sharp indeed. Of course, this puts a heavy burden on the local authorities, in addition to what it puts on the Exchequer.
Let me take some other items. The removal of housing subsidies has made difficulties for local authorities who wished to carry out their full housing obligations much more serious. In the eight years that I mentioned, the increase on the rate burden on housing has been from£9 million to£23 million. They are smaller figures, but they are still significant.
There is another item which appears on the expenditure account of local authorities, but it derives from their capital expenditure and that is what they have to pay by way of interest and repayment charges on their capital borrowings. That is going up steeply now. Most of them have still got some old cheap borrowing left, but the amount is getting less and less as every year goes by and the rate of interest appears to be going up, higher and higher. In the result, in the table that I mentioned, we get a rise from£63 million to£127 million for that item alone, some of it no doubt due to additional expenditure but quite a lot of it due to far higher rates of interest. Those are very real financial difficulties, and it is not surprising in those circumstances that the increase in the rateable value on the last revaluation is gradually, if I may use the phrase, being absorbed by higher poundages. They are working slowly back to the old poundages, because they have to. It is no wonder that increased grants have been required.
What is the Government's contribution in this White Paper to all these difficulties? This is the threepenny bit that I mentioned. Either this year or last year—I forget which for the moment—the 20 per cent. concession by way of offices and shops meant a loss of about£27 million of rateable value to the local authorities. They asked for a Government contribution. They pointed out that the Treasury would get some good out of this. Nothing was done. There was no contribution and no concession.
Now we have come round to the other side, and instead of being called to suffer a loss they are to be offered a concession by the partial rerating of industry. It amounts to something not very far off the previous one. What is the result? This time the Treasury pinches two-thirds of it, and if the arguments which we have heard from the right hon. Gentleman had been applied when there was a question of the 20 per cent. loss on offices and shops, then in that case the Treasury would have made a contribution of about two-thirds. Heads I win, tails you lose—a very old-fashioned phrase, and it applies exactly to what has happened in this case.
There is another matter. Do hon. Members opposite really expect us on this side of the House to say "Thank you" in a loud voice when the Government accept the principle of the re-rating of industry and freight transport hereditaments, and then say that, unfortunately, such is the economic condition of the country—I think that is what it amounted to—they can only give us one-third of what they ought to? I simply do not accept the proposition that industry cannot stand this. If we work out these charges and apply them to industry—they do not amount to a row of beans in most cases, and there is no doubt whatever—I will not repeat what has been said time and time again from this side of the House—that the reason why the Government will not face up to rerating industry is that they have too many friends in industry to do it and it is the local authorities who are being made to suffer for this incredible partiality; and, as regards the Treasury's two-thirds of the proceeds, this quite incredible stinginess comes at a time when they are desparately facing such serious difficulties. We will argue the whole hog when we come to legislation, for legislation will be required. I apologise for taking so long, even though I have not yet reached the right hon. Gentleman's time limit.
I will turn from that matter to the object of this financial exercise. I looked at the White Paper very carefully, and in paragraph 3 I find this:
The present system of percentage grants acts as an indiscriminating incentive to further expenditure"—

Does anybody say "Hear, hear"? Not a soul.
and also carries with it an aggravating amount of central checking.
Two points are made there. So it is proposed by the substitution of the general grants "to increase the independence of local authorities in the raising and the spending of their money". That is the Government's offer.
Let us start with the percentage grants. This is exactly the point that the Geddes Committee made in 1921. It regarded the percentage grant system as a money spending device, and it said so, but it found no evidence of extravagance. That was extraordinary, but it was the case. Nor did the Ray Committee in 1932, because what it said was:
It is not suggested that local authorities enter upon reckless expenditure merely because a large percentage will be borne by the Exchequer.
We find that in paragraph 11 of the Committee's Report, Cmd. 4200.
Nor did the Edwards Committee quite recently, in 1953. What that Committee was considering was the Exchequer grants; that is, a high percentage grant, and this is what was suggested to it, almost the same words as I have just quoted from the White Paper: It has been suggested that the payment of Exchequer grants on a higher percentage and without central control over the expenditure on which the grant is calculated offers a powerful incentive to extravagance.
The Government's phrase is:
an indiscriminating incentive to further expenditure
and that it gives insufficient safeguards. Later, the Committee said:
We have received no direct evidence to support the suggestion that equalisation grants have so far led to extravazance.
It then went into the most elaborate inquiries and summarised, among other things, the report of a working party which it had set up for the purpose, and said:
The evidence presented to the Committee gives no support to the suggestion that Exchequer grants have resulted in extravagance.
I hope that we shall hear a little bit less about the suggestion that local authorities, in doing their job, are doing it extravagantly.
Let us take the next point. What about the "aggravating detail"? Why connect it at all with the form of the control and the form of the grant? All of us know that we can have the most aggravating detail, necessary or not, without any financial control at all, and, equally, we can relax it without touching on financial questions. There is one perfectly obvious example. The Ministry of Transport makes the most detailed regulations about driving on the roads, covering all kinds of things, such as the size, the shape and almost the colour of the vehicles on the roads, the kind of notices to be put up, every single thing—detailed control, perhaps necessary, but very detailed. If we want to relax controls, we can do it quite easily, and, as I see it, it has nothing whatever to do with the form of the grant.
Let us take another case, that of the Ministry of Education, which, after all, is the one we are talking about here. Let us look at the capital expenditure control. That is not to be covered by this. I have had a look at it, and I find that it is prescribed that there should be a numbered peg in the racks for each pupil's hat and coat, and that between the stands carrying these pegs in the cloakroom there should be not less than five feet. The regulations also prescribe the temperatures of various rooms, the lighting, the candle power, and all the rest of it. All this is entirely unconnected with the grants that we are talking about today—the revenue expenditure on education. These are capital projects, and they will not come into this picture.
At the end of the day, what does the district auditor have to say? Surely he can be relied upon to say, first, that there is no illicit expenditure, and, secondly, that there is no extravagant expenditure. I have not the least doubt that if we wanted a very loose control we could have it, whatever the form of the grant. If we wanted a particularly tight control, equally we could have it, whatever the form of the grant.
I would refer now to what the right hon. Gentleman mentioned, no doubt with some apprehension, and that is the Report, which is mentioned in the White Paper, of a Committee set up by the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants. It consisted of Dr. Lees,

who has been writing to the newspapers about this lately, the borough treasurers of three towns, a county treasurer and a deputy city treasurer. Surely, on this question of aggravating control, their views are at least worth having, and this is what they say in page 166.
They ask whether there is substantial scope for reducing the number of inquiries made at the grant claim stage in respect of percentage grants, for it is here and only here that complaints about detailed central control, said to be associated with the percentage grants, are relevant:
We find that there is not. The evidence is that complaints of excessive detailed control cannot be substantiated. We approached a group of six county boroughs, varying in their populations from 80,000 to 800,000, and asked them to enumerate the number of inquiries at the grants claim stage, and we find that the evidence was that 47 inquiries were made and that five of them were considered reasonable by the boroughs concerned.
Apparently, the object of this extensive change in the grants is to eliminate a number of inquiries—in these cases, amounting to five in all. It is quite ridiculous. The Committee referred to other inquiries, and then added a sentence which I adopt completely:
It is to be hoped that future assertions of this kind will be supported by evidence. In the past, this has not been thought necessary.
Nor, apparently, did the right hon. Gentleman think it necessary. He just said so, and that was that.
Now, what about the independence of the local authorities? It is a very strange argument, as I understand it. These percentage grants allowed the local authorities to have too much control of expenditure. That we have heard time and time again. Therefore, the argument is that we must remove the percentage grants, and by so doing we shall increase the independence of local authorities. This is the most extraordinary proposition.
I come back now to say a word or two about the old block grants. In 1928, when the Local Government Act of the following year was being introduced in this House, the late Mr. Neville Chamberlain, then Minister of Health, put exactly the same position before the local authorities.
We can then simply hand over the grant to each local authority, and as long as they maintain a reasonable minimum "—


note the word "minimum"—
standard of service we can withdraw all those irritating examinations of small details and give them the opportunity of that independence and initiative which I think they value above all things."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 26th November, 1928; Vol. 223, c. 105.]
Then he said that it would be exceedingly popular among local authorities on that account. It really does not happen, and bears remarkably little relation to the true position.
Later in the same debate—I will not take up time quoting it again—Mr. Arthur Greenwood, replying for this side of the House, said something which is profoundly true. He reminded the House that a block grant has only one object, and that is to save money for the Exchequer. If it does not save money for the Exchequer, it fails in its object. That is exactly the position in this case.
What is to happen? The local authorities are told to accept it because it will mean more decontrol. They are not told what the decontrol will be. They are not even told that there is to be any decontrol; they are simply told that there will be a review. When it is to come into effect is even more uncertain. Then they are told that this is an important step towards it. Really, all that has nothing whatever to do with the true position.
On the issue of independence I accept two more sentences out of this Report by Dr. Lees and his colleagues. First:
A percentage grant enables and encourages the more progressive authorities to improve standards of service "—
I adopt that—
without undue impositions on local rates.
I agree.
It provides scope for different methods of tackling problems.
Again, I agree. Those, and other advantages, are perfectly obvious.
What is to happen if this block grant goes through? The battle will be transferred from a battle between the right hon. Gentleman and the Treasury, or a battle between his Ministry and the local authorities, to a battle conducted on the floor of the council chamber itself, where the chairman of the finance committee—chairmen of finance committees usually welcome this sort of thing—will find a great accession of power. Those who are interested in education, in the fire service,

in the health service, or in child care, will have to battle for what they can get out of the general grant. I believe that to be fundamentally wrong.

Mr. R. Gresham Cooke: That is democracy.

Mr. Mitchison: It is not democracy. I will give the hon. Gentleman an example, and then let him tell us if this sort of thing is democracy.
Recently, we had a debate on mental health. It was proposed that mental health should be transferred to the local authorities for a good many purposes. It was fully realised that such a change would involve considerable expenditure by local authorities, and the Lord Privy Seal, without committing himself, quite definitely expressed the view that, in general, that would be right. Mental health is, apparently, one of the subjects which will be covered by this general grant. At any rate, I have seen nothing to the contrary. Child care certainly will be. Indeed, those are the two next subjects down the list of importance in these various specific grants.
What a strange place the Home Office is. It hands over to the mercies of the Exchequer, by this general grant, mental health and child care, both of which are its responsibilities. What is reserved? What stays out of the general grant? The police. Why? Is it that the functioning of the police is so vital and obviously important that the Home Office must not run the risk of having police expenditure cut down and finding the police force at the mercy of the chairman of the finance committee of some local authority, and subject to the aberrations of Tory democracy, of which we have just heard expression? Is that the reason why the police forces are left out? Or what is the reason? Is child care or health including mental health any less important?
Above all, what is to happen to education? What will be the position of progressive authorities, which, as everyone knows, have done so much better in some areas than other less progressive authorities have done? Are they to be prevented from going beyond the absolute minimum of whatever it is that the Ministry chooses to prescribe as the least that any decent local authority might do? Let us remember that, in


this competition, between one service and another on the floor of the council chamber, there will be one competitor in many councils, perhaps the most powerful of all, namely, the man who wants to take the general grant and, come what may, reduce the rates even if the children suffer for it. That will be a possibility under this arrangement.
I can but say that, on several scores, it seems that these financial proposals are absolutely indefensible. They conceal one real object, to limit expenditure on some necessary services, particularly education, and to put the blame for it on to the local authorities, doing it in such a way that most of the trouble will come after the next General Election, the result of which—I was going to say the certain result, but the gods might be angry at that—the probable result of which every hon. Member knows perfectly well. [HON. MEMBERS "Hear, hear."] Hon. Gentlemen opposite can have that one; they have precious little to console themselves with.
Let us for a moment consider the timing. Those who lose for the moment will be indemnified fully at first, and then it is to wear off gradually; it will begin to stop in about three years' time. Then there is the famous£40 million, the money which, in the eyes of the local authorities, already belongs to them and which, since their accounts are kept in a form different from the national accounts actually appears in their accounts. That will be handed over to them in bits and pieces, just as a softener for a bit. Then the full weight of what is proposed will fall. It will fall on the social services. The local authorities, or the Labour Government, will have to carry the blame for all that of which the House is asked to take note today.
In these circumstances, having regard to the financial difficulties of local authorities—I have mentioned them—to the fact that this White Paper does nothing at all substantial to help them, to the fact that the rerating proposals are absolutely unsatisfactory and quite insufficient, and to the further fact that the effect of this general grant is bound to be a restriction on expenditure on necessary social services, especially health and education, we certainly cannot accept it.
We remember that Troy was taken with a wooden horse. This is the wooden horse, and here is the right hon. Gentleman sitting on it, waving a few Rent Act forms as the banner of Tory freedom. It will be pushed into the citadel of local government. When the door is open, what will come out?—the Treasury servants intent on economy at all costs, and the Tory Party which does not believe in social services, which wants to cut them but not to take the blame and obloquy of doing so in public.
I beg to move, to leave out from "House" to the end of the Question and to add instead thereof:
cannot accept the statement of policy contained in the White Papers. Command Papers No. 9831. No. 161, and No. 209. relating to Local Government in England and Wales and the White Paper, Command Paper No. 208, relating to Local Government in Scotland, which fails to meet the increasing financial difficulties of local authorities, does not fully rerate industry or give local authorities the full benefit of partial rerating and which, by the substitution of a general grant for existing grants, hampers the development of essential social services, particularly those of education and health".

Mr. Horace E. Holmes: I beg to second the Amendment.

7.20 p.m.

Mr. Robert Cooke: I would ask for the indulgence of the House as this is the first occasion that I have had the privilege of addressing it. Not long ago when I was at school I learnt a song which went as follows:
Draw it shorter and prose it less.
Speeches are things we chiefly bless
When once we've got them over.
I feel that that perhaps applies to maiden speeches.
I gather that it is traditional that I must not be controversial, and I will endeavour to follow that tradition, but I cannot resist the temptation to answer the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison), who likened my right hon. Friend to a gentleman operating a wooden horse. He suggested that the Minister would be sitting on the wooden horse. That would be a very fair and open thing to do. If my right hon. Friend were really doing what the hon. and learned Gentleman suggested, he would be concealed inside his wooden horse.
The subject of the debate is very close to what I was greatly concerned with


before I reached the House, and that is local government in the great City of Bristol, which I am very proud to be able to represent. I suppose that in the terminology of the Minister I am a "borough man".
I wish to make my very brief remarks on the broad lines of local government finance and its implications.
We have in Bristol a new council house, the finest in the Kingdom, which cost Ell million and took 20 years in the building. It should be the centre of interest in the city, but I am afraid it is not, and it is even held in ridicule by some people. I believe the reason for that is that we have seen through the years a gradual usurpation of functions from our local authority by officialdom in Whitehall. Such is the state of affairs in Bristol that the city council has this very day issued a newspaper of its own which attempts to create more interest in municipal affairs, because the city council is disturbed that only 38 per cent. of the electors voted at the last election. If a city council thinks it necessary to do that, how very necessary indeed it is that reform in local government should create more interest in local affairs.
I believe that finance is the key to the whole problem. The present system of percentage grants tends to make for irresponsibility in local finance. I should not think there is a single hon. Member who has served in a local authority who has not heard at some time a member of a committee or council say, "What does it matter how much we spend? Three quarters of it"—or whatever the case may be—" is paid by the Government." If we are honest with ourselves we must admit that that has happened, and it is happening now. That must stop; and I feel that the proposed system of a general grant, fixed but not immovably fixed, will solve the problem.
There has been a mass of objections to the proposals in the three White Papers. That is not very surprising in view of the tremendously complicated subject involved. Reform is, we all agree, long overdue. While on the subject of reform, I should like to say, as I represent a great industrial city, that I am sure industrialists will welcome the sensible and moderate reforms in

industrial rating which are here proposed and that they would not welcome those proposals which have been suggested by hon. Members opposite.
There has been a somewhat heavy attack on the White Paper by educationists, and I should like to say something in the light of my experience as a school master, as a member of a local educational authority, and at present as the governor of several schools. It has been suggested that block grants are designed primarily as an economy measure. It has been said that that is a bad thing—that is one of the great objections—and that education will suffer. I do not believe that will be so.
Successive Ministers of Education have said that there are to be no cuts in education, and I believe them—I am sure the whole House believes them—but that does not preclude reorganisation of our existing resources, and I feel certain that there is room for economy in some of the activities now going on in education. Capital expenditure could in some cases be reduced. Indeed, the slight contraction in building costs has already in my division resulted in a saving of as much as 10 per cent. in large contracts—£20,000 in£200,000 in one example. We could save more if we cut out all unnecessary frills. If we saved on capital expenditure we should save on loan charges, and annual expenditure would be reduced also, and better planning could easily reduce the amount of maintenance required in our school buildings. We all know that the thing that really matters in education is the quality of our teachers. I feel that State education could learn something there from independent schools, which concentrate on the essentials.
I hope that my enthusiasm for this subject has not caused me to trespass too far on the path of controversy and to be deserted by the good will of the House. I feel very deeply on this subject because I have just had intimate experience of local government. It is the most satisfying work imaginable to see one's plans actually taking shape in front of one as one watches, whereas Members of Parliament very often have to wait a long time to see their legislation bear fruit.
With local government now in danger of losing its identity, I believe that the proposals in the White Paper will do


much to give it renewed strength and the independence which it needs to meet the challenge of today.

7.28 p.m.

Mr. A. Blenkinsop (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East): It is always a pleasure to be able to congratulate an hon. Member upon his maiden speech. It is an even greater pleasure in such circumstances as this when the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke)may also he competing as the youngest or one of the youngest Members of the House as well as one of our more recent additions to the House.
We can certainly compliment him upon the obvious sincerity of his speech and upon his very able delivery and ease of manner, which I am sure most of us will envy very greatly. Thinking back even a modest number of years to my own maiden speech, I am sure that it was not delivered with anything like the fluency or facility of the hon. Member's speech. Therefore, it is no mere use of words to say that we shall be very glad to hear him later on in our debates when any bar about controversy can be fully withdrawn. However, the hon. Gentleman did not interpret it too religiously so as to make his speech utterly dull and uninteresting, nor would we have wished him to do so.
We have started a very important debate on local government and its reorganisation and I suppose that it is natural to concentrate on the financial proposals which are put forward in one of the White Papers; but, of course, it is wrong to examine the proposals one by one. We must take the financial proposals together with those for changes in the area, status and purpose of local government.
I am sorry that the opportunity for local government reorganisation seems to have been taken in such a tepid manner, because these proposals for alterations in areas and functions cannot be regarded as anything more than a holding operation. Far from the Minister justifying his claims that this is a major change in the areas and functions of local authorities, the changes are nothing more than running repairs, no doubt very necessary, but still requiring major changes to be made later.
If the House is to do justice to the problem of local government, we shall

have to return to the issue with more major proposals before long. I do not say that as a challenge or as an attack upon the right hon. Gentleman, because it is clear that this is an issue which has been dodged by nearly everyone for a long time. It is merely that now we have these proposals we are disturbed that they should go such a short way. I doubt whether the Minister will get an easier passage for them merely because of their relatively modest effect upon the existing structure. He might well have anticipated better support for the proposals had he been able to offer some major principle upon which we could grip.
When listening to the right hon. Gentleman, I found it very hard to believe that we were discussing one of the most vital aspects of life in this country. I found it hard to believe that we were discussing the future of the education and health of all of our children—and of ourselves, for that matter. I found it hard to believe that the debate was related to the purposes of local government. I felt that it was a dry and rather bloodless exercise by the right hon. Gentleman, inevitably provoking just as much vigour and criticism as if we had had a much more controversial and much wider proposal before us.
For example, there has been much discussion about the general scope of local government activities as against central Government activities. There has been much discussion about the Health Service and about how far local government could take back some of the duties handed over to bodies appointed by the Minister under the National Health Service Act, 1946. Even if that were not being considered, there has been much discussion about how to get more effective forms of co-operation in the Health Service which would result in even higher standards of service to the general mass of the people—whether by a single form of administration covering the three existing arms of the service, or at least by some better form of co-ordination of those three arms.
There is nothing in the proposals about the functions and areas of local government which will make a ha'p'orth of difference to that kind of practical problem, or to the future development of the Health Service. I use that example,


because I know rather more about the Health Service than about some of those services more affected by the proposals. There is nothing in the proposals which offers any hope for future development, even on the purely administrative side.
The position is worse when we examine the financial aspect of the proposals. Certainly at this early stage of our discussions it would be a mistake to consider narrowly the detailed administrative proposals without paying at least some regard to some wider considerations and to the possibilities, which, unfortunately, have not been seized, of securing a better form of administration and organisation which might encourage much wider responsibilities for local government, and possibly much better services.
One wants to envisage having large individual authorities truly viable financially. For many of the services of which I am thinking, that must mean authorities covering fairly wide areas, areas which might almost be regarded as regions, areas more comparable to those built-up areas which the Minister found so difficult to name in any way satisfactory to the House. We must have authorities large enough to be financially viable, taking in at the same time, if at all practicable or possible, rural as well as urban areas.
We want to find a means to put an end to the continuous struggle between town and country areas and authorities. I cannot see much hope in these proposals for securing an end to that struggle. I see an annual struggle instead of one more infrequent. I had hoped that the opportunity would be taken of suggesting an area of government large enough to embrace some of the functions which have been hived off to other statutory bodies. That means an administrative structure of a fairly wide and all-embracing kind.
On the other hand, I agree that we need a means of enabling people locally to take a part in local government activity of all kinds—and I do not mean merely by being elected to the town council. At the other end of the scale is needed a form of organisation which is so intimate that all can play some part. That is something more intimate and local than anything proposed in the White Paper. I found nothing in the White Paper to

suggest that it should be one of our objects to find that form of intimate local government in which people could participate and help to provide some of the services. I hope that as time goes on it may be possible in housing for people to help to look after an area in which they live. It is certainly possible and in an unorganised way has already taken place in welfare matters.
We must keep the two ends of the scale in mind—the large authority able to finance and help provide services and covering an area wide enough possibly to take over some existing bodies, and, at the other end of the scale, an organisation small enough and intimate enough for people living on a housing estate, or in a small area of a town, or in a village, to do something themselves and actively to play a part. Only in that way are we likely to make local government the lively and vigorous thing that we want to see. One of my criticisms of the proposals put forward by the Minister is that they seem to pay no regard either to the top or to the bottom level, and therefore seem to me merely to be trying to keep the existing machine running along for a few more years before a further definite change is proposed.
I want to examine a little more closely the proposals as they affect the health services. My hon. and learned Friend rightly pointed out that we had a debate only a short time ago relating to the Royal Commission's Report on the Law relating to Mental Health and Mental Deficiency—a very important Report, as recognised by everyone. Speeches were made by hon. Members on both sides of the House urging the importance of the take-over by local authorities of very large sections of community care for mental health purposes. Very strong representations were made, including the point, which was vigorously pressed, that this would be bound to involve considerable expenditure by local authorities and that the Government must face this fact and make some special provision for it.
If the Government face this need after the pledges given both by the Ministry and the Lord Privy Seal we are going to start straight away with a specific grant for mental health, because of the responsibilities that I hope we all agree will be placed upon local authorities with regard to residential accommodation, for


example, in connection with some of those cases which are at present housed in mental hospitals and with regard to the great extension of our clinic and other services for the mentally ill. This will undoubtedly require special central Government provision. What is the overwhelming case for central Government provision of this kind? It is that anything done by local authorities will enable hospitals in the National Health Service to operate much more efficiently.
Last Friday in Newcastle I attended a conference with the head of an important local hospital, together with the representatives of the local authority, including the medical officer of health. They were discussing the kind of practical problems which will arise, how to help the hospital to do its job more efficiently by taking from it some of the cases that are undoubtedly more of a welfare nature. In order to do that the local authority will have to spend a great deal more money both upon the visiting services which they provide and also upon accommodation. This is quite inevitable, but, by doing so, they will enable the hospital to treat much more adequately the cases which require treatment and which, at the moment, are not getting as much treatment and care as they could have.
I thought that this was something which was accepted by hon. Members on both sides of the House, and it is so important that I hope the Minister will make it clear at some point in the debate that it is not intended that this mental health expenditure is being absorbed in the general grant procedure but that there is agreement that in legislation which will have to come at a later date specific provision will be made with regard to central Government assistance to enable local authorities to tackle this job. It would be quite fantastic if, in this case, local authorities were to be left to fight out, within their own ranks, the question whether or not this expenditure should be met by them. This is surely a national matter, because it is part of a national service. What local authorities do in this regard will undoubtedly relieve the national Exchequer in other ways, by relieving the main hospital services. This is a very strong case, and I very much hope that before the end of the debate a statement can be made about it.
I am very disturbed too about the detail of the proposals, as outlined, affecting these health services. As far as I can understand it, the position is that the duties and responsibilities of local authorities with regard to clinics and social workers—no doubt including psychiatric social workers, health visitors and other local authority workers—will in future be delegated to boroughs and urban district councils with populations of over 60,000. On the other hand, the question of residential accommodation for the care of these same cases will be left as a responsibility of county borough councils and county councils as at present. What will happen about the welfare provisions laid down in the 1948 Act we do not know. The local government journal seems to be doubtful whether they are also being absorbed into the general grant procedure.
I do not see any hope here of any clearer form of organisation; I see no hope here of trying to bring together the different responsible bodies; I see no unity; I see a break-up even greater than there has been already. I am not arguing whether or not it is right that the smaller authorities should have a chance of running their own show in some of these schemes, but what I very much object to is that this is being done at the very time when the financial proposals being put forward are such as to make it almost impossible to hope that these bodies will be able to carry out these services.
I am sure that my hon. Friends and others will be saying about education what I am saying with regard to health matters, namely, that for the kind of service that we want to provide for the people these proposals simply do not stand up. It will not be possible effectively to organise the kind of service that we want either for mental health—an obvious example, which has recently been debated—or the equally vital and serious problem of the care of old people. There again we are in fact breaking up what ought to be a national service. It is because it is to all intents and purposes a national service that the main financial provision should be upon a national basis, and local authorities in this as in other fields should be encouraged to do more, because by so doing they would be helping to meet a problem which would


otherwise have to be faced by the Central Government in its hospitals or other welfare institutions.
Therefore, looking at the matter from the point of view of someone who has been especially interested in the health administration of this country, I regard these proposals as in detail utterly ineffective to do the work that we want them to do. They illustrate again what I might almost call my despair in reading these White Papers. I find no inkling of attention to what must be our major concern, namely, the quality and standard of services to be provided. That is surely our first criterion, and it is our desire, following upon that, to ensure the widest possible participation of people in local administration and local work.
Looking through both White Papers, I can find no inkling of imagination or any conception of development of these services for the future; nor can I conclude that, in practice, even the work that we are committed to in health can be organised within the framework provided by the right hon. Gentleman. Therefore, I find myself criticising these proposals on wider grounds than those advanced by my hon. and learned Friend. Not only do I bitterly resent the financial proposals put forward, but I find in them a complete lack of imagination for the development of those wide and vital services affecting every one of us. It is on those grounds that I hope many hon. Members will speak during this debate.

7.50 p.m.

Mr. R. W. Elliott (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North): With my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke), I seek the indulgence of the House this evening on the occasion of my maiden speech. It should by tradition have a local emphasis and in this connection I have a certain advantage in that I have lived all my life close to the division I now represent in this House. That this is not an essential qualification for good representation was fully proved by my predecessor who bore an illustrious Parliamentary name and gave long and distinguished service in this House.
The conurbation to which the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison)especially referred, which has as its centre the great port of Newcastle,

is prosperous today. Our yards are busy, our order books are full and employment stands at a very high level. It has not always been so, and I feel that we may well pause in this debate on local government—on that most important aspect of local government which is finance—to recall just why it was that the nation' industrial land and buildings were relieved of rates to the extent of 75 per cent. by the Local Government Act, 1929. That Measure—introduced at a time when we had one million unemployed persons who represented an annual cost to the Exchequer of£22 million—was designed to assist industry to become competitive and to encourage a higher level of employment.
I suggest that this rating relief, concentrated as it was automatically in areas where unemployment was heaviest, contributed considerably to the well-equipped Tyneside which we know today. It should be emphasised that in the recent rating revaluation industry sustained by far the greatest increase, in that its burden, as was pointed out by my right hon. Friend, was considerably increased, and the raising of the level to 50 per cent. will mean that before very long industry will be paying just about three times as much in rates as it has been paying. I would at all times advocate the return of the rating system as the basis of local government finance. This 25 per cent. increase will provide an estimated£30 million in rate revenue. Local authority independence in the collection of revenue will be considerably enhanced and the taxpayer, whose share of local government costs has risen out of all proportion, will gain in that there will be a compensatory reduction in grants.
I am sure that industry will recognise that its present prosperity justifies some increase, and will welcome the strenthening of local association. Although rates are allowable against taxes the increased cost to industry will be considerable, and I hope that Tyneside and other such industrial areas, in these prosperous, but nevertheless highly competitive times, will not be prevented from playing their full part in the strengthening of the economy by an undue share of local administration costs.
I welcome the suggestion embodied in the White Paper that authorities should in appropriate cases extend their arrange-


ments for the paying of rates by instalments. I believe it most desirable that ratepayers should be fully conversant with the financial policy of their local authorities. In recent years it has not only been a regrettable but, I believe, also a highly dangerous aspect of our democratic system that apathy at times of local elections has so often reigned almost supreme. The result has been low percentage polls. More publicity on the costs of administration may do much to remedy this, but much more effective will be the further localising of authority in general and of spending in particular. The relative merits of the percentage and the general grants will be fully considered in this debate, as they should be, but on this occasion I must, of course, be uncontroversial, difficult as that is. However, I trust I am in order in expressing the hope that hon. Members in all parts of the House will recognise one great virtue of the general grant proposal, which is that it will most certainly bring councillor and ratepayer closer together.
Authorities are, not unnaturally, concerned about the future adequacy of the grants, and I am sure they will be encouraged by the assurance that latest cost of services will be considered, together with the need for future development. I welcome the proposal that rate deficiency grants will be assessed on the basis of rate product rather than on rateable value. I advance also a plea that in future discussions, on the basis of the distribution of highway grants, consideration should be given to the inclusion of the county boroughs. I cannot see any good reason for their continued exclusion especially if we are to have a general grant.
The announcement recently that we are to have established in our City of Newcastle the Rutherford College of Technology was warmly welcomed there, and we are proud to know that, as a great industrial centre, we shall be in the forefront of the national drive for greater technological skill. Here I believe our policy must essentially be a national one and I am sure that the ratepayers of Newcastle will welcome the proposal that expenditure for advanced education, although included in the general grant, will, quite rightly, be shared by authorities with few or no technological responsibilities.

I believe that the importance and urgency of local government reorganisation cannot be overemphasised. After all, there has been no major change in the structure of our local administration since 1894. Changes in some directions are urgently needed, and cities such as mine, with little or no available building and which have been obliged to acquire land from adjoining counties, will welcome the proposed intention to allow the creation of new county boroughs and the expansion of existing ones. The special problems created by conurbations have exercised the minds of councils within these areas for a considerable time, and I believe it is highly important that the proposed examination of conurbations should be carried out by a body independent in every sense of the word.
Finally, I make a plea for the fullest possible consideration, during the very necessary reorganisation of our local government system, of local tradition and pride. In our deliberations on the future status of councils, large or small, we should invariably bear in mind that, throughout the length and breadth of this land, there are men and women who, motivated by a sense of service, and by an affection for their cities, towns or villages, give constant service without which our democratic system could not possibly survive.

8.1 p.m.

Mr. F. Blackburn: It is a great pleasure to me to offer to the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne. North (Mr. R. W. Elliott)the traditional congratulations of the House of Commons, and I do so very sincerely. It is a great trial for anyone to make a maiden speech in this House, however much public speaking he may have done on other occasions.
I congratulate the hon. Member upon coming through so competently. It was fortunate that he could choose a subject on which he could draw from his past experience and knowledge in his own constituency and city. We hope that we shall hear from him very often on future occasions. He realised that he should not be controversial and he just skirted the edge of controversy. I thought that on one occasion he was exploding the Government's case for the general grant. I will leave it at that. I am sure that the


hon. Member will feel much happier than he did at having overcome the greatest obstacle in the Parliamentary career.
We are having a two-day debate. The Minister will sit here and listen to various Members of Parliament. I wonder how much effect we shall have upon him. My complaint about the Minister is not that he does not listen to good advice—he listens most carefully—but that he never takes good advice. However much I may disagree with certain points in the White Paper, I do at any rate congratulate the Government upon having at last produced something, even though the period of gestation has been rather long. I think I am correct in saying that it was in the King's Speech, in 1951, that the reform of local government was promised.
Now that it has been produced and the suggestions have come forward, there is a good deal in it with which we disagree, but the Minister will expect a wide variety of views. Everyone knows that it is very difficult to get agreement on this subject, even among local authorities. It is equally difficult to get agreement among individuals. Each of us has his ideas, and no one will get a scheme which he considers ideal. We shall have to accept a compromise.
Whatever the final solution, there are two criteria which are fundamental. One is administrative efficiency, which means that the authority must be able to carry out efficiently the task or job given to it. We ought to state that the area of administration need not be larger than is necessary to secure this requirement. I do not want to be accused of a parish pump outlook this evening, but I would remind the House that some of the smaller local authorities have been doing an exceptionally good job, but will come out of this reorganisation very badly.
The second criterion is the retention of local interest and initiative in local government. The word "local" is of prime importance. My own personal views on reorganisation seem to be ruled out by the White Paper, which says, in paragraph 12, in page 5:
Moreover, he"—
that is, the previous Minister—
made it clear that he did not consider that the existing system of local administration had broken down, and that he would not be prepared to contemplate eliminating either the

two-tier system in the counties or the one-tier system in the big town.
In other words, the previous Minister was not prepared to have a comprehensive review of local government nor, I take it, is the present Minister. I believe that the best solution is the two-tier system in the whole country, whereby county boroughs would play their part in the solution of problems over a wider area, but a two-tier system with a difference. I would make the county borough authorities the more important units, entirely responsible for the administration of all services, and would give to the upper tier only general policy and the wider aspect of planning, and possibly of rate equalisation. I would also get rid of expensive county council elections by allowing those authorities to nominate their upper-tier representatives. But this is a controversial point, and I shall not develop it now.
My scheme would suit Middlesex admirably. There must be strong influences at work for the preservation of Middlesex, but now a Royal Commission is to be appointed. It must be very frustrating for the authorities in Middlesex to find that, although they have all the requirements for county borough status, their claims are not to be considered just because they happen to be in the County of Middlesex.
How sincere are the Government about the creation of new county boroughs? While they put forward that they are prepared to make these new county boroughs, the matter is so hedged about with conditions that it would be easy to formulate a very strong argument against the creation of any. I am sorry that the Minister has now gone out; he must know that what is bedevilling local government and causing such frustration is delegation. It is small wonder that the authorities dream of county borough status, and that many of them are looking round to consider whether they can combine with their neighbours to secure the required population.
I know that there are many in my own constituency who are anxious to combine with neighbouring authorities in order to achieve county borough status and to control their own affairs. With a White Paper such as we have now, every authority that can possibly secure county borough status will wish to do so. I


wonder how sincere the Minister is about this question of creating new county boroughs.
Delegation, even compulsory, is not a satisfactory solution, and wherever possible the powers should be conferred. In any case, where delegation is necessary it should be according to a national scheme and not be left to the whim of an individual county council. There has been such wide variety in the system of delegation that it is entirely wrong. In any case, where delegation is necessary, the Government ought to step in and decide upon a system of delegation that is to be applied universally.

Mr. James Ramsden: I will make the same point about delegation if I have the chance. Do I not understand that the present proposals for delegation include the possibility of reviewing individual arrangements made by the Minister? To that extent they are an improvement upon our experience in the past.

Mr. Blackburn: Yes, but it is still to be delegation and we wonder how far the Minister will be influenced by the fact that we are changing from conferring to compulsory delegation.
I wonder when the Government think that the reorganisation that is envisaged will take place. So far as I can see, the only provisions in the White Paper which can take place during the lifetime of the present Government are those on finance. Aft the earliest, the Local Government Bill cannot be passed before early in 1958. Then, two local government commissions have to be appointed, one for England and one for Wales. What is their job to be? In page 7 of the White Paper it is said:
Entirely new procedure is required. This must provide means for studying problems comprehensively and far assessing the wider repercussions of proposed changes upon other authorities affected. It must enable local circumstances to be investigated and local opinion to be consulted. It must provide independent and informed guidance, while leaving to the Government and Parliament responsibility for ultimate decisions.
In other words, the commission for England has to review the whole structure, including county boundaries, consider application for county borough status and the extension of boundaries of existing county boroughs and to review

the county districts within the conurbations.

Mr. Gibson: Except London.

Mr. Blackburn: I am taking it for granted that every hon. Member is aware that London is excepted from this particular question.
I would add that the commission should review all county districts. I do not think that that should be left to the county councils, but it should be done by the commission. Perhaps I had better make clear that this is not a constituency point, because my area falls within a conurbation and the review, in that case, would be done by the commission; but I consider that in other areas the commission should be the body to review county districts.
Leaving aside the additional task I would place on the commissions, when does the Minister think they can complete the tasks he has given them? Would he agree that 1960 would be a reasonable date by which we could expect their first recommendations? If the Government wanted to complete reorganisation within the lifetime of this Parliament they should have acted much more speedily. In order that all that is contained in these proposals should be carried out the White Papers should have been produced at a much earlier date in the history of Parliament.
I wish to say a word on the conurbations. I agree that the recommendations have to come from the commissions, but have the Government any view on the conurbations? Do they favour the creation of new county boroughs within the conurbations? Paragraph 41 suggests that as a solution, but paragraph 30 contradicts it. Paragraph 30 says:
In a conurbation, a multiplicity of autonomous local authorities is clearly undesirable.
Paragraph 41 suggests that it is one of the solutions. I agree that in paragraph 30 there is an attempt to make a case for the number to be 125,000. I am very interested to note that the Minister has now had second thoughts and altered that number to 100,000. That made me wonder whether he thought ten conurbations of 100,000 would be a multiplicity and. therefore, objectionable, but eight conurbations of 125,000 would be all right
I take it that the purpose of the White Paper dealing with functions is to bring about amalgamation without compulsion, a sort of gentle blackmail. It seems to suggest, "If you want any powers, form units of 60,000." I find paragraph 6 unexceptional. It says:
In general, the Government are anxious that larger responsibilities should be entrusted to the district councils. These councils are necessarily in closer touch with the people they serve than county councils can be, a factor of particular importance in the case of those services which intimately affect peoples daily lives—for example, the welfare, health and education services.
That paragraph can only refer to district councils of 60,000. The others will be left chiefly with the dustbins. Paragraph 21 states quite baldly:
In the education service it is proposed that the divisional executives should be abolished.
There is no explanation. We do not know why that is proposed, but it is just baldly stated. I know there are many different views about this and I must state that I am expressing a purely personal view. I believe the divisional executives have done a good job, particularly in those counties where the local education authority has wanted them to function adequately. I think that they deserve some explanation of the proposal. Many of them cover areas of 100,000 population. It seems rather strange if we are to take powers away from areas of 100,000 people and give them to areas of 60,000. In any case, they have a right to be told how they have fallen down on their job and why remote control will be more effective.
I turn to the White Paper on Local Government Finance. Before dealing with the most controversial point about the block grant, I wish to make several other observations. It seems a little naïve on the part of the Minister to refer to the valuable research work and investigations carried out by a study group of the Royal Institute of Public Administration, which he mentioned this afternoon, and the research study of the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants, as if the work of those bodies had a profound effect on the Minister in preparing his statement when, as a matter of fact, he has entirely ignored every single one of their recommendations. The Minister suggested no new

source of revenue, but said that improvement must come from improvement of the system of local taxation, whatever that may mean.

Mr. Gibson: Rating of site values.

Mr. Blackburn: My hon. Friend says "rating of site values", but I hardly think that the Minister is interested in that.

Mr. Arthur Skeffington: Why not?

Mr. Blackburn: I do not know why not, but I do not think that he would be interested.

Mr. F. H. Hayman (Falmouth and Cambourne): Has my hon. Friend considered the possibility that the Government are increasing housing rates which, in turn, would increase rateable values?

Mr. Blackburn: I hope my hon. Friends will not ask me to reply entirely on behalf of the Government.

Mr. Gibson: Why not? They cannot.

Mr. Blackburn: The Minister suggested that they have to rely on improvement of the system of local taxation. I do not know exactly what he meant by that. Even with the partial rerating the Minister refuses the full benefit to local authorities. I find that a particularly mean act. I was rather worried about what he had to say this afternoon. I do not know whether other hon. Members understood the Minister as I did, but it seemed to me that he was making a threat that when the transitional period was over the Government would take not two-thirds of the benefit of rerating, but the whole of it. If I am correct, I hope that the Minister, or the Parliamentary Secretary, will make the position quite clear. It sounded very ominous to me.
Turning to the rating of electricity properties, while I am grateful for what has been said, I still do not feel that the Minister has been just to those local authorities with power stations in their areas. Half the rateable value of electricity properties goes to the Generating Board, and half of that half is apportioned to rating authorities in which generating stations are situated. They are deprived of other rateable value in the area which is covered by the generating station and they have to put up with the


grit and the dust, and I think they might well have been granted the whole of the Generating Board's half, shared among them.
In respect of gas undertakings, justice is again denied to those authorities whose undertakings are used for storage purposes. I have fought this battle so often that I now despair of securing any clement of justice for these authorities, and I shall say nothing more about it tonight.
I should like to conclude with a few remarks about the block grant. In my view it would have been far more honest if the Government had said, "We intend to cut down Government expenditure and to limit our grants to local authorities." ft would have been far more honest to do that instead of to pretend that the aim is to give more freedom.
Which controls are to be abolished? I know that there is to be a discussion about this, but which are to be abolished? In every local authority Bill in the past few years the Minister has been building up and consolidating his empire. I have before me the first Report of the Local Government Manpower Committee, Cmd. 7870. Let me read what the Report says about the control which the Minister of Education must exercise:
While the Minister has a general oversight of the field of education, it is recognised that he has six primary duties which determine the points at which it is necessary for him to exercise control:
(i)He must be satisfied that educational facilities and ancillary services are provided in sufficient quantity and variety.
(ii)He must be satisfied that educational establishments and ancillary services are well managed, equipped, staffed and maintained.
(iii)He must ensure the proper freedom of parents, teachers and other third parties.
(iv)He must be satisfied of the qualifications of teachers and medical officers to the extent necessary to safeguard their and the children's interest.
(v)He must control fees charged and awards and allowances made, to the extent necessary to safeguard the interests of local education and other school authorities, parents and students.
(vi)He must control the provision of educational premises."
Which of these controls will the Minister abandon? Not a single one of them. As a matter of fact, he has already made his decision quite clear; he will not give up any of these controls. Why I am particularly stressing the controls in respect of education is that about 80 to

85 per cent. of the general grant will be concerned with education. This is what the Minister said:
But on one thing I will not compromise. Administration is for the local authority. Minimum standards are a question for me, and I will never surrender the duties of promoting education and of controlling and directing educational policy put upon me by Parliament. It must be my duty while making every allowance for variety of pattern to minimise so far as I can differences in standards of performance, differences that is in the quality of educational opportunity between locality and locality.
It is obvious that the Minister of Education does not intend to give up any of the controls.
The controversy about the block grant and the percentage grant is not new. It has been going on all this century, but in the past the block grant has been advocated as an economy measure and there has been no pretence of trying to hide it as giving greater freedom to the local authorities. On previous occasions it has been honestly put forward as an economy measure. The minority Report of the Royal Commission on Local Taxation, in 1901, recommended it; the Geddes Committee, 1922, the May Committee. 1931, and the Ray Committee, 1932, all recommended the block grant system, but they were all concerned with economy and not with the development of local government services. They did not pretend that they were giving greater freedom to the local authorities.
The Geddes Report gave rise to a committee with a very curious history. Acting upon its recommendations, the Chancellor of the Exchequer set up another Committee in May, 1922, with Lord Meston as Chairman. In March, 1923, the Committee, arrived at certain conclusions and the Chairman undertook to draw up a draft report. For three years the Committee awaited the production of the draft report. Many Questions were asked in Parliament, but still the report did not materialise. In February, 1926, the Chairman's draft report was circulated to the Committee, but the Committee was never called together to consider it, the report was never published and for a long time it remained an unexplained mystery. It was a mystery until Schulz, in his book. "The Development of the Grant System," put forward the following explanation:
…the bulk of the evidence submitted to the Committee during its short working life bore


against the policy which the Government and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Churchill, with the backing of the Treasury, had determined to pursue, namely, the introduction of a block grant designed to limit the commitments of the Treasury over a period of years.
All the evidence of today is also against the Minister's proposals, but the Government are going ahead with them.
It is no wonder that the Government did not make use of the study of the Institute of Municipal Treasurers and Accountants, for the Institute made some comments about the block grant. I conclude with two quotations, commencing on page 281, from the book, "Local Expenditure and Exchequer Grants":
The two outstanding features in over a century of development in the English grant system are the persistence of the percentage grants and, latterly, the increasing attention paid to the equalisation of the resources and needs of local government areas. The first feature can be explained by the solid practical advantages of the percentage grant: its simplicity and intelligibility of form and intention; its efficiency in stimulating and encouraging the development of local services; its equity in taking automatic account of rising costs and in cutting cost differences between local areas—these and other positive advantages are sufficient of themselves to account for the fact that the percentage grant has not only survived the various attempts to abolish it or reduce its influence but is now more firmly established than ever as the principal financial link between central and local government.
This is a report by people who spend their whole life in local government, but when they wrote it they did not know this Government. They wrote:
We have spent very little time on the claims of a general grant to absorb specific grants. General grants are also irrelevant to problems of inauguration and innovation and if in more settled cost conditions it has as yet proved impossible to devise an equitable unit grant for a specific service, it is a fortiori likely to prove imposssible to devise an equitable general grant to replace specific grants. If equity is to be an important consideration, the general grant cannot be regarded as a serious competitor to the percentage grant.
I leave those words with the Minister—"if equity is to be an important consideration". It is for the Minister to decide

8.30 p.m.

Sir Ian Orr-Ewing (Weston-superMare): I do not intend to follow completely the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn), for I could not help feeling that the whole of his most interesting speech—I certainly do not mean to belittle it in any way—was

based on the very curious assumption, that all this should have been done a long time ago. I wonder why it was not done.

Mr. Blackburn: The point that I made was that if the Government had wanted to carry out their proposals they should have introduced them earlier, because it will be impossible, during the natural lifetime of this Parliament, to carry out all that is contained in these proposals. I agree about the past, that several Governments have failed to do anything.

Sir I. Orr-Ewing: I am glad that the hon. Gentleman has cleared up that point. I would, however, point out that it would have been very rash on the part of anyone to have hurriedly introduced proposals without the fullest possible discussion with all types of local authorities. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that it is not always very easy to get all types of local authorities to agree about any one point.

Mr. Blackburn: Then it was very rash of the Government, in 1951, to promise this reform in the King's Speech.

Sir I. Orr-Ewing: One has to start somewhere. That is the theme that I want to put to the House.
This may not be the perfect solution. I do not myself say that it is the perfect solution, but I believe that it is a start along the path which will lead to a solution of many of the problems of local government today. I do not know whether most hon. Members will agree, but I have felt very depressed indeed, over the last quarter of a century, in seeing what has happened in local government. It is not only a question of power without responsibility, of duties without the cash to carry it out, of carrying out the orders of Whitehall. It goes a great deal deeper than that.
I think that there has been in the minds of many of those engaged in local government—and this applies in the great cities just as much as in the smaller urban districts—a fear that, eventually, they would be absorbed into the central Government. I could quote cases by way of example, as no doubt could hon. Members opposite, where far more time is taken up in quarrelling on matters of party politics than in getting on with the job of local government.
This is very largely because many of those who take part in local government have this fear in their minds and are beginning to think that they are part of the political system and not part of the system by which they are elected democratically to carry out the wishes of the people and to serve them as well as they can in the administration of their local affairs and finances. It is for that reason that I welcome any sort of attempt that is being made now to clear up the position.
I should like to begin, in the short time that I propose to speak, by dealing with the question of structure. I, personally, have the honour of being President of the Rural District Councils' Association. It has been debating this matter at some length, though I do not pretend for one moment to speak on it as its delegate. There have been many discussions in which this question of the magical 60,000 has been raised. This 60,000 does not apply only to rural districts. Unfortunately, it applies to county boroughs and non-county boroughs. I cannot see why this insistence on the figure of 60,000 should be perpetrated and perpetuated in all documents that have been published on this issue.
I beg my right hon. Friend to reconsider the matter not merely from the point of view of what is in the White Papers, and of what is written and said, but from the point of view of encouraging people to believe that they can get a certain amount of responsibility without fear of those forces in the decision which the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde mentioned just now, seeking only that get-together to reach this magic figure. Surely the point is not just a detailed number of people. Already, we have been told by the Minister that that is not the only consideration. We know that, of course, although the insistence on this figure is very marked. Surely the point is: can we or can we not enable a local authority which has less than a certain number of people to carry out local government in an efficient manner?
I really must say that it is a very great pity that this figure has been used. Equally. I think it a very great pity that more consideration has not been given to the powers that can be either conferred upon or delegated to those authorities below that figure. It should not be some-

thing like an iron table. I would much sooner see it like a sheet of ice that can be broken through. Thereby, I believe, the local inhabitants could create great benefit——

Mr. Gibson: They would drown.

Sir I. Orr-Ewing: No, they would not drown. It would inspire them to greater service of the people.
Then we come to the question of delegation and conferment. I agree very largely with what has just been said. Wherever it is possible, I should like to see powers conferred direct. I believe that delegated powers lead only to a lot of unnecessary work. If it is true, for instance, that the block grant is to save a great deal of detailed control as between Whitehall and local government, surely it must be equally true when we deal with the question of delegated or conferred powers. It is not a direct analogy, but that is true. I should like an assurance—indeed, I should like more than an assurance from the Minister. I should like to see drafted into whatever Measure is eventually produced before this House that conferment should be the aim wherever possible, and that this barrier of numbers really will not stand in the way to the degree it does at present.
I have gone into this matter in a certain amount of detail. In the case of a non-county borough the powers that can be easily conferred, and that can be easily absorbed within the machinery of local government without any embarrassment to their officials or anything else, can be roughly summarised as these: local health and welfare services; classified roads, town and country planning, consideration of planning problems and town map preparation; shops, theatres and cinemas, and food and drugs.
At present, none of the powers to deal with those things can be conferred. That seems to be quite ridiculous. If the machinery is there, if the personnel is there, if the knowledge is there, and if the local population is there—though not up to the magic limit of 60,000—why not confer those things directly, instead of merely considering their delegation?
The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison)talked about rural districts and their


powers. He suggested that because certain rural districts above a magic limit were to get certain other powers all the other rural districts would think that they themselves had been very badly treated and were thought to be rather second-rate people. I do not think that he need worry about that. I do not think that I am misinterpreting what he said, but he need not worry a lot——

Mr. Mitchison: I would only say to the hon. Member that if I conveyed that, it was due to my own inability to express myself. I certainly had no such intention.

Sir I. Orr-Ewing: I am very glad that the hon. and learned Gentleman had no such intention, and I am quite sure that if I misunderstood him it was owing to my inability to understand what was said.
I must say that these proposals are most disappointing so far as they affect the non-county boroughs. There is no use concealing the fact that there is a great deal of disappointment, and I have great sympathy with their view. On this main question of finance and the block grant, as against the specific grants and the rerating of industry, all hon. Members who have spoken from the benches opposite have not taken this rerating of industry picture far enough back into history.
It is not quite fair to consider what is being taken back by the Exchequer and what is being allowed, without considering the picture right back to 1929. If a question of rating and derating is a serious matter now, surely that must be considered against the background of the initiation of the system of derating in 1929. Surely no other approach to the matter can be found. I do not think anybody can take exception to what I have to say.

Mr. Charles Pannell: I do not know what the hon. Gentleman meant by his last phrase. Perhaps he would make clear what he meant when he referred to the necessity to consider derating against the conditions of 1929. Will he not make it clear to the House that in those days there was chronic unemployment, whereas now we have a period of full employment and, consequently, the rerating of industry is receiving increasing acceptance from the other side of the House?

Sir I. Orr-Ewing: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman did not mean to misunderstand me. What I was talking about was the question of the grants which were given in relation to the loss of revenue by local authorities when industry was derated in 1929. Now it is being partially rerated and, obviously, there must be an adjustment. I do not believe that it would be either fair or wise at this moment to impose a full rate on industry. It would come as too much of a shock in relation to costs of production and everything else at a time when we are fighting very hard indeed not only to retain some of our export markets, but to get others, and when we are doing everything we possibly can to limit the rise in the cost of living. I do not think it is possible to ignore those points when we are considering the question of complete rerating.
Coming to the question of the block grant and the percentage grant, I cannot understand the complete lack of confidence which is expressed by those who say that the block grant must be misused by local government. I have never heard such a thing.

Mr. Gibson: Who said it?

Sir I. Orr-Ewing: I must remind hon. Members, some of whom may not have been present at the time, of the most bitter, brutal, fierce and spirited attack by the hon. and learned Member for Kettering on the whole system of local government democracy. The whole theme of his speech was that we cannot trust these people.

Mr. Mitchison: indicated dissent.

Sir I. Orr-Ewing: His pets were held up in front of us and we were assured that they would be knocked down, whether it was health, education or the social services. We were told that some councillor would say, "Not a penny more on the rates" and another councillor would say, "We must have sewerage instead of education." That was the whole theme of his speech. To me, it was terrifying. If that really typified the view of hon. Members opposite, local government is indeed coming to an end if ever they get back into power. It would be steamrollered out of existence.

Mr. Mitchison: I can only say that I, too, would find it terrifying if I had said that, but I did not.

Sir I. Orr-Ewing: No doubt the hon. and learned Gentleman will read through his words very carefully tomorrow in the OFFICIAL REPORT. I do not think that I have misinterpreted the real meaning of what he said. If any other meaning can be read into the words he used, I should be very pleased to hear it.
I have considerably more confidence in the common sense of those who are elected to local government than has the hon. and learned Gentleman, but I have this, too. I do not wish to be rude to the local authorities, education authorities, or anybody else, but I know, and everybody else knows, whatever treasurers or investigating accountants or anybody else may say, that at different stages of the initiation of schemes the amount of time and money that is wasted as between the local authority and Whitehall is enormous. That is one of the reasons why I like conferred powers as against delegated powers, because delegated powers keep the strings in the hands of the central Government. Directly conferred powers should be given to those who deserve it and who have proved their worth.
I believe that the block grant system, which leaves the detailed administration and planning, the actual detailed work carried out on the spot and as near to the electors as possible, is a much more healthy system than the ordinary percentage grant. To remove the controls—and I admit that we do not know exactly what controls can be removed, though we have been assured that a working party is getting on with it—from the district to the county and to put or keep them in the hands of Whitehall would be a very risky step if we are to do anything to encourage democracy in local government. The nearer we can get to the people, the more human we can make local government, the more possible it will be for the individual to go round to the council offices and shoot his head off if he wants to.
Nothing is worse than the feeling which is spread only too easily by county councillors who say, "We cannot help spending all this money; we have been told to do it by Whitehall."

Mr. E. C. Redhead: We thought that the hon. Gentleman had confidence in them. [Laughter.]

Sir I. Orr-Ewing: It is no good hon. Gentlemen opposite trying to laugh it off; they know that it is only too true. That has been used over and over again as an excuse for what might well be unnecessary expenditure, and that is the sort of thing that is doing a great deal of harm to local government. I want to take every possible, practical and sensible step which will maintain the standard, at the same time putting responsibility as near to the door of the house in which the local elector lives as we possibly can.
There is one point which has been completely overlooked by all hon. Members who have spoken from the other side of the House so far. They have always forgotten to say that the public and the ratepayers are both protected by the undertaking that has been given that the standards will be maintained. They omit that, and then, of course, one can imagine all the evil things which the hon. and learned Gentleman said about the misuse of power by local government.
I cannot say of 'these proposals that they will encourage all forms of local government, or that they are a remedy for all the difficulties and problems, but at least they are a start. I only hope that whatever is being said in this debate from both sides of the House will enable these proposals to be improved, and that, when they have been improved, we can then press on to do something to help local government.

8.50 p.m.

Mr. R. E. Prentice: I fear that I may be trying the patient.: of the House considerably in being the third maiden speaker tonight to ask for its indulgence. This is an important debate, on which many hon. Members on both sides wish to take part, but, nevertheless, I ask for the indulgence of the House for a few minutes. I certainly feel myself in need of it.
Before I come to the matter under discussion, I hope that the House will forgive me for offering a personal word. I should like to say how conscious I am that my election to the House was made possible as a result of the loss to the House of a man very greatly respected on both sides, a man whose outspoken ways did not always command agreement from all hon. Members but who always, for his courage and candour.


commanded respect. His friends on both sides, I am sure, would like to know that I have found much evidence in my constituency of the high regard in which people held him there.
When the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Housing and Local Government opened the debate, he said that he supposed that all hon. Members taking part would have a particular angle; they would be county council people, county borough people, and so on. I plead guilty to being a county borough man with a Greater London complex. The White Paper points out that, in all the great variety of authorities in Greater London, there are three county boroughs. I have the honour to represent one half of one of these county boroughs in this House, the County Borough of East Ham. It happens that I have had experience also as a borough councillor for six years on the council of one of the other county boroughs in the Greater London area, the County Borough of Croydon. I shall use the "parish pump" a little. I know that that approach has been deplored in this debate, but I hope that what I have to say here will have a wider application.
First, as to the way in which the financial proposals seem likely to affect the Borough of East Ham, I must report to the House that they have been received by the Council and by the Council's officials with a great deal of concern. If I appear critical, I hope that I shall not be thought to offend against tradition in making a maiden speech by being too controversial. I do not intend it in a party sense, at least, because the other council to which I referred, that of the County Borough of Croydon, which has a political control different from that of East Ham, passed a resolution the other evening which was very critical of these proposals, for much the same reasons.
The East Ham Borough Council is concerned, first of all, as most authorities are, at the uncertainty of the future. Those of us who have taken part in local authority work know that, under the system of specific grants, authorities are able to plan ahead, make an estimate of costs, and know what proportion of those costs will come to them from Government grants. The position now is that councils do not know how much

they will get. Although there will be announcements from year to year, they do not know what they will get in two or three years' time; they have only the hypothetical figures in the White Paper. Nor do they know how the grants in future will be adjusted to inflationary pressure. I realise that the Minister dealt at some length with that and said that it was explained in the White Paper that the Government would take account of inflationary tendencies. But how quickly? Things will be very different from what they were under the system of specific grants when authorities received a proportion of what they were spending.
An even more serious cause for concern, perhaps, in my constituency arises from what is said in the White Paper about there being some gaining authorities and some losing authorities. All the evidence seems to indicate that East Ham will be a losing authority when these new grants come into effect. In the financial year 1956–57, the value to the County Borough of East Ham of the specific grants, which will be superseded, was about£900,000. From the figures given in the Annex to the White Paper, we see that, if these moneys had been applied in the same year to the County Borough of East Ham, it would have received only£776,400. From the rerating of industry, the Borough would have received about£58,000. I will not trouble the House with the details, but there is left a gap of about£65,600, which is over a 1s. rate.
Here I illustrate what I meant when I said that I hope the House will forgive me for my parish pump method of speaking. I consider it is a serious matter for the whole country if authorities which have a poor rateable value, as East Ham has, are to be losing authorities under the scheme. In East Ham the product of a Id. rate is less than£6,000, and at the moment the rate is 22s. 6d. in the£. Consequently, these proposals are very serious. We realise that there are some other imponderable factors. We do not expect to get much value locally from the new system of rating nationalised industries, and we do not anticipate that the new rate deficiency grant will do anything to make up the gap compared with the old equalisation grant.
As in the case of other authorities, our education costs will be going up in the near future. The bulge in the school population is passing from the primary schools to the secondary schools with a greater cost per child. The very fact that the basis of the new grant takes no account of the current level of spending or the prospective level of spending on srevices such as education means that an authority in the position of East Ham will get a smaller share in future of the Government's money than it has done in the past. I hope all these matters will be taken into account by the Government before legislation is drafted.
I wish to say a few words on the question of area status. Here I shall leave the parish pump behind. Perhaps that is just as well, because I think that when we address our minds to the question of local government reform we are all liable to have split minds. We tend to be in favour of reform in general but not of reform in particular when it affects our own area, particularly if we think it will have an adverse effect.
Surely there is an overwhelming case for a large measure of reform in local government. I can only express the hope that the measure suggested by the Government of using the new local government commissions will prove adequate to the task. I have some doubts about it, but I hope they will act with speed and will not be afraid to make drastic proposals.
The present framework was laid down, as we are reminded in the White Paper, in the Local Government Acts of 1888 and 1894. In those days local government was very different from what it is now. There was practically no provision for public education and practically nothing in the way of public housing, and the highways did not carry a single motor car. The picture was entirely different. The population changes which have taken place since then have been enormous. In those days the people had not heard of "conurbation" or "special review area". We have since then had an enormous social revolution without the pattern of local government keeping pace. There was only one major safety valve, and that was the promotion to county borough status of towns which were growing, but that safety valve has been stooped for over thirty years.
I hope I do not appear to be too partisan if I say that the Government seem to be rather slow in bringing forward any major proposals for reform In case I am accused of being partisan I had better say that successive Governments have failed in that respect. My hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Mr. Blackburn)referred to the fact that it was likely to take a long time before the local government commissions were able to bring forward their proposals and the proposals were acted upon.
I would ask whether the Government would consider either the setting up of more commissions or adopting some system by which the commissions can devolve their authority on sub-commissions so that the work may be put forward more quickly. I had intended to refer to the impossible task of bringing the Greater London problem into the work of the commission for England, but that has now been covered by the proposal for the setting up of a Royal Commission. One can only hope that this Royal Commission will work more quickly than most Royal Commissions and that its proposals will be implemented with speed.
We have to make up our minds to the fact that we do not want to change for the sake of change, but we want to make certain that our local government system keeps pace with a changing society. A system laid down in the latter part of the nineteenth century cannot of itself cope with the problems of the second half of the twentieth century. I hope that in this matter the Government and the House will not be afraid, where necessary, to tread upon local vested interests—quite honourable ones—which want to cling to the forms to which they have been accustomed, and that we shall have the resolution to carry forward a genuine reform of local government.
Those of us who believe in it, as I hope we all do, must realise that unless the form of local government is adequate to those tasks it is bound to lose further powers in the future and will not flourish as we want it to flourish.

9.1 p.m.

Mr. Richard Fort: I shall be speaking on behalf of all hon. Members when I congratulate the hon. Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice)on the outstanding maiden


speech which we have just heard. We now know that there was no need for him to ask the indulgence of the House. He spoke as one who has studied the way we do things here and as one who is a very worthy successor to a Member who always stimulated and interested us, the late Mr. Percy Daines, whom we have missed so much since earlier this year. I shall also be speaking on behalf of the House when I congratulate the hon. Member not only on his mastery of his subject and the fluency of speech, but on the nice way in which he salted his speech with criticism which was not controversial.
I had a good deal of sympathy with the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East (Mr. Blenkinsop)when he remarked on the quietness of the debate. I came here wondering whether we should debate the form of local government in the spirit of G. K. Chesterton when he wrote, "The Napoleon of Notting Hill". It is perhaps a pity that we have remained so free of outbursts of enthusiasm for local government and that we have confined ourselves to its niceties.
In that we have made the best comment of all on the fundamental soundness of the Government's approach to the problem of reform, and shown that the former Minister of Housing and Local Government was right when he decided that local government had not broken down, but needed only change and reform, something of the nature of the Local Government Act, 1929, which was a major step forward in conformity with conditions as then seen. So, nearly thirty years later, we have to change again, but in that change we are confirming the fundamental soundness of the arrangements under which we have worked much of our lives.
I want to discuss the problem of change and reform as it affects the smallest unit of local government to which no one has yet referred, perhaps because there is not a great deal which one can say about it. I refer, of course, to the parish council which in so many rural parts is an important unit of local government which allows those living in each parish to express their views on what they think ought to be happening in an area which they know very well.
I should perhaps declare an interest in this matter, in that I am one of the national vice-presidents of the Association. Seven and a half million people live in rural parishes and there are 7,500 parish councils out of a total of just over 10,000 parishes, and they spend£1¼million every year—small in comparison with the expenditure of larger authorities, but still a large sum of money.
My first point concerns boundaries. I think that all who have read paragraph 56 of the first White Paper will have felt that the proposals for reviewing the boundaries of parish councils are inadequate. I hope that by the time the Bill is drafted those proposals will be drawn from the vagueness in which they are at present into something a good deal more precise.
Talking about parishes leads me on to the country districts about which I should like to echo a remark which several hon. Members have made, especially my hon. Friend the Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir I. Orr-Ewing), to the effect that the figure of population of 60,000 mentioned in paragraph 13 of the second White Paper should not be interpreted too rigidly, and that when the counties consider the county districts it should be indicated to them that there are several other factors which should be taken into account. The sense of community in an area is an important factor and, from a practical point of view, in order that we can have units in county districts which are viable for the functions which they may be called upon to perform under delegation, the rateable value might also be taken into account.
I now turn to the problem of delegation. I have the honour to represent a constituency in a county whose county council exercise the powers of delegation to the largest possible extent and so gives a great deal of satisfaction to the county districts. I am not sure what has been the reason for the Lancashire County Council's wise delegation. It may be because its population has been fairly stationary in comparison with those of the southern counties. Whatever the reason may be, powers of delegation have been widely used and this has been an important contributory factor towards the continuing great interest in local government which manifests itself in every sort of election in Lancashire.
I think that one of my hon. Friends mentioned that in Bristol only 38 per cent. of the population polled in the council elections. In a hotly contested year in Lancashire the figure runs at well over 60 per cent. for county council elections and for local councils the percentages are higher still. I believe one reason is that local authorities have many powers delegated to them.
Whilst touching upon this problem of delegation I want to ask the Minister if he will expand upon the reasons for the abolition of divisional education executives. In Lancashire—and I expect that other councils will adopt the same procedure—even when these executives have been abolished the arrangements to be made in future will be upon an area basis; in fact, they are likely to cover the same areas as are covered by divisional executives at present. We found them a sensible arrangement for promoting the interest of people in the area in educational activities. Admittedly we have experienced pre-dating the 1944 Act, but they have worked so well that I think we shall probably continue with them after they have been officially abolished.

Mr. C. Pannell: We know that divisional executives have been dismissed in a phrase in one of the White Papers. Now the hon. Gentleman is speaking of arrangements in Lancashire prior to the 1944 Act. Is he so much in the confidence of the Government, or has he the gift of prophecy, or does he possess inside information, which enables him to state that when divisional executives are abolished the Lancashire County Council will set up some area authorities? It is under no obligation to do so.

Mr. Fort: I agree with the hon. Gentleman that there is no obligation. I was merely hazarding a guess that the Lancashire authority will return to a system which worked well before 1944, has worked well since and may be continued after the present executives have officially been abolished. I suggest that other counties might well regard the matter in the same way, and I ask the Minister to enlarge on the reasons for the abolition of these executives.
Parish councils have small incomes, but they are as much if not more concerned than anyone else because they are at the

bottom of the financial queue. When rates get high, there is a kind of psychological resistance which prevents parish councils from imposing the rates which they might otherwise impose because they get complaints from the ratepayers more quickly than any other authority. Consequently, if they cannot put up the rates they are unable to exercise their existing powers.
Thinking over the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison)I came to the conclusion that he proved his point almost too handsomely. If the Government proposals produce a certain carefulness in the spending of money I think they will have justified the policy they propose to follow. As I understood the arguments of the hon. and learned Gentleman it was that about which he was worried; that they would be too careful; that what he considered desirable projects, and what others might say were more experimental, would be looked at more closely than at present. If that be true, certainly regarding the matter from the point of view of parish councils, and also I think from a general point of view, any procedure which results in making those engaged in local government look more carefully at what they spend must result in a gain. The new procedure will give power to county halls with less checking from London, despite the figures which I know will be produced to remove the impression that there is a lot of checking in London.
Leaving the details of these proposals to be considered and discussed much more fully when we get to the Bill, I say that the three White Papers make a sensible step in the reform of local government, and bring up to date a system which has worked well for more than half a century, enabling it to meet the demands of our country today.

9.16 p.m.

Mr. David Griffiths: I do not know whether I ought to declare an interest, since I am vice-president of the Urban District Councils Association, on the next rung up the ladder to the hon. Member for Clitheroe (Mr. Fort). From the arguments which he has adduced, I am inclined to think that he should be on this side of the House. I cannot see how he can logically defend


the proposals put forward by his right hon. Friend.
I commend the civil servants who have been responsible for briefing the Minister and I commend the Minister for putting over in a remarkable manner such a bad case. His predecessor said that his predecessor on 8th May, 1946, had promised a thorough investigation of local government. Apparently, that has been carried out. I have looked through the White Papers and I submit that these proposals are almost the most pernicious proposals that have been laid before this House since the 1929 Derating Act. [Laughter.]
Government supporters may laugh, but I have heard only two of them who claimed to have served upon a local authority. One of those stated that when the central Government granted 85 per cent. of the expenses of a local authority, the councillors said, "It doesn't matter. The Ministry will pay." I give the lie to that. I have had more years in local government than the hon. Member has had months. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare (Sir I. Orr-Ewing)is not in his place. He is president of the Rural District Councils Association. The figure of 60,000 population that he gave I agree is rather on the large side and I am hoping that the Minister will reconsider it.
I am not with the hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare when he says that we are making a party issue of the reform in local government. Nothing is further from the truth. I first got on to a hospital committee more than thirty years ago, before some hon. Members who have been talking about party issues in local government were born. Party issues were at work then. Landlords and vested interests had always had a monopoly, but when the Socialist Party came along they found there was opposition, and so local government became a party issue. Anyhow, this was an irrelevancy and ought not to be tolerated.
I appreciate that reorganisation in local government is over-due and that many parishes, rural and urban districts, and even some boroughs, are incapable of maintaining their social services either from the aspect of rateable value or from the administrative aspect. Therefore this question should be examined carefully.

Non-county boroughs with a population of 4,000 cannot maintain their services. Something must be done. The Minister and the Department have a difficult proposition, and the snag comes when we come to the question of delegation of powers.
Although many mistakes have been made, taking it by and large, local government representatives throughout the country have done a tremendous job for many years. They have been very public-spirited men and women. Often they have carried out their duties not only at personal sacrifice morally and physically, but at financial expense. To my mind these White Papers will kill the very spirit that is most essential.
It has been remarked by hon. Members opposite that the block grant will not make any difference. I contend that no argument has yet been used by them to show that it is other than a question of collusion—I put it no higher—between the Treasury and the Minister of Housing and Local Government with a view to curtailing expenditure. The hon. Member for Weston-Super-Mare said that we on these benches do not appreciate the difficulties of industry. If he had been a member of my authority when the Derating Act came into operation he would have found that in an industrial area the mines, railways and farms were all relieved and the burden fell on cottage property when there was unemployment and 75 per cent. of the people were working three days a week. He would then have realised the difficulties created by that Act.
Now it is said that we have to be tolerant to those people or we shall put them out of the market. Nothing of the kind. The hon. Member knows full well that if they pay their rates and taxes that payment will come out of other costs and will go in that expenditure rather than in Income Tax or through other channels. Why should they not meet their obligations? All industries have been cashing in and doing exceedingly well since 1939 and now there is to be another imposition put on the ordinary householder while the industrialists will benefit.
It was asked what different would the block grant make to the educational system? I should imagine that any hon. Member who has been in local government any length of time knows full well


that since 1914 85 per cent. of the approved expenditure of Government grants was approved by the Treasury. Who is to say that the Treasury has not been a keen watchdog of local government spending? Apart from Treasury officials, what about Government auditors? Are they not responsible persons who have always brought us to book if we have made any expenditure over and above what we should have made? I think it is grossly unfair. The Government are using a lot of irrelevancies.
I turn to Cmd. 9831. The Minister has told us that he wants to maintain local autonomy and freedom and to encourage local government representation, and in paragraph 15, dealing with the status and functions of authorities, the Government state:
The test of any system of local government in this country should be whether it provides a stable structure, capable of discharging efficiently the functions entrusted to it, while at the same time maintaining its local democratic character.
I put it to right hon. and hon. Members opposite that in carrying out its functions a local authority has to be guided at all times by the Ministries. Is not that the case with the county council in the first place? Is it not the case that the Government Departments have been the watchdogs in all matters and have granted permission for limited expenditure? Why attempt to be mealy-mouthed about this when we know full well that this expenditure has been controlled?
The Government intend to cut down expenditure and also to check the progressiveness of some Socialist monopolised authorities. [HON. MEMBERS: "Oh."] I said "Socialist monopolised authorities" advisedly, for there are also Tory monopolised authorities. It would be interesting to have an analysis of which has been the more progressive and an investigation of their social services. I speak with pride, although regret, of the fact that in my authority we had to suffer severely in 1929 when the burden was placed on cottage property. Hon. Members will know that that was also the case in other rural areas.
It is ridiculous for the Government to use the phrase about maintaining "its local democratic character" when the White Paper proposes that 55 non-county boroughs and urban districts with populations of 60,000 should have delegated

powers. We cannot retain local control in those conditions.
Hon. Members have referred to the divisional education executives. I do not want to elaborate the point, but before I came to the House I spent over twenty years on a divisional executive. One divisional executive in my area covers a population of 96,000. Is it to be nonexistent or to be left in the hands of Whitehall or of the County Hall at Wakefield? Will that be to the benefit of local government, of progress and of the wellbeing of the headmasters, headmistresses, staff and scholars? I hope that the Minister will have second thoughts about this, which is a very serious matter, and I urge him to give it further consideration.
Turning to the Appendix, I suggest to the Minister that the delegated powers in respect of local health and welfare services should be brought down to units of 20,000 and even below and that we should consider not only the population but the services provided and the progressiveness of the authority as well as the future developments likely to take place. I agree that many of these services could be merged, and I hope that when the Commission is appointed it will get on with the job not only as speedily as possible but in an impartial way and will not be dictated to either from Whitehall or from the county council. This will mean the survival of the fittest. It will be a battle between county boroughs and county councils. Indeed, that has been the position for a long time. When I spoke on a Private Bill in the House in 1947, I urged the Minister—a Minister of my own party—not to accept the Bill but to appoint a body to tackle the job completely instead of patching here and there. I urged him to get on with the job of reorganising local government. There is no doubt that county boroughs and new towns have to expand. The question is where they are to expand.
We also have the question of rivalries between the towns and the county councils. I hope that the Commission will get on with its job expeditiously and with consideration for the authorities concerned. I also suggest that the right to apply for delegation should be extended to Part III services of the National Assistance Act. It can be a very useful part of the social service. Anyone who has had experience of looking after


the aged, sick and suffering will know full well that their problems can be more speedily dealt with by local men and women. The same comment applies to classified roads.
The provision of libraries is another important function in the service of local government which should also be left with the local authorities. As to control over food and drugs, the right hon. Gentleman said that he would waive that to a large degree. In dealing with the prohibition of the sale of T.B. milk, are we to wait until a county M.O.H. deals with this problem rather than allow the local medical officer, sanitary inspector or housing inspector to deal with it? Will not that be a problem? I am afraid that it will
Finally, while I agree that we need some reorganisation, I maintain that many of the proposals in the White Papers go from the sublime to the ridiculous. The Government are not giving the councils enough money to meet the costs. Industries will still be privileged at the expense of the ordinary ratepayers. Why should they be? That has gone on far too long. While I readily agree that there is need for reorganisation it should be looked at very seriously. It is desirable that it should take place in many instances but I think that in these proposals we are going too far.

9.33 p.m.

Mr. S. Storey: My right hon Friend, in opening his comprehensive review of the White Papers, said that our views would be largely covered by the authorities with which we were most connected. I reside in a rural district council area. I represent an urban district council and a non-county borough. I have been a member of a county borough council and I am a county councillor. I believe that my constituency will come into a special review area. Therefore, I think that I am entitled to say that I find some little difficulty in reconciling the conflicting interests about areas, status and finances of local authorities.
I want tonight to concentrate my remarks upon the decision to reduce the derating of industry to 50 per cent. That decision is one of considerable concern in my constituency where there is such a heavy concentration of industry.

Industry now bears 17·9 per cent. of the rate burden in Stretford and 27 per cent. in Urmston as against 6·27 per cent. for the whole country. After derating is reduced to 50 per cent., it will bear 30 per cent. of the rate burden in Stretford, and 42 per cent. in Urmston as against an average of 12½per cent. for the rest of the country.
I want just to examine the reasons for increasing the rate burden on industry. I have tried to follow what has been said both in the White Papers and by the Minister, and I think that there are two reasons. One is that there has been a failure to devise a new source of local revenue, and the other is that the Government feel that industry can bear an additional share of the cost of local government. The first is a confession of failure, and the second it to turn away from the principles upon which derating was based. Even if we allow that industry can pay more, I believe that we should not extract the money by taxing the tools of production but by taking it from the profits of industry.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill), in his Budget speech of 1928. clearly stated the principles upon which derating was based. He said:
Our system of local rating, dating from the 16th century, is wholly inapplicable to modern industrial production. The practice of levying local taxes on the tools and plants of production is, in its nature and essence, economically unsound and even vicious. The rates enter directly into the cost of production and affect our competing power at home and abroad.
He therefore went on to announce the 75 per cent. derating which is now in force.
A young Conservative Member hailed that proposal as the most important, the most comprehensive, the most daring and the most progressive to be put forward by a Conservative Government in office. He said that no other Budgets could rank with it in its importance, and its effect upon the system of local government and the whole industrial system. That Conservative Member was the then hon. and gallant Member for Stockton-on-Tees. Yet, when competitive power in industry today is as important as it was then, he now, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bromley (Mr. H. Macmillan), instead of decreasing the


rate burden upon industry doubles it at a cost to industry of£15 million by reducing the derating, or of£20 million if we compare it with the position in 1955–56. If a patient who, through constant blood donations is suffering from pernicious anæmia, is saved by reducing those blood donations, it seems to me to be folly, once he is cured, to compel him to double those blood donations.
There is another aspect of this problem to which I want to call attention. Industry has to bear a large part of the rates, but has no voice in their expenditure. My right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford, in that same speech, when making his derating proposals explained why industry was only derated by 75 per cent. He said:
The remaining quarter is left, not in derogation of the principle which we affirm that the tools and plants of production ought not to be subject to taxation, but only the profits arising from their use—the remaining quarter is in recognition of the importance of preserving some connection between local industry and local fortunes, in order that the local authority and local manufacturers may have some interest in common and take an interest in each other's welfare."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 24th April, 1928; Vol. 216, c. 844–865.]
That was a laudable aim, but it is not one which has worked out in practice. How often do we see an industrialist play his part on a local authority? To begin with, it is not easy for him to get there. It is the votes of the ratepayers who own dwelling-houses who elect councillors. They have a tendency to vote for the councillor who will look after their personal interests rather than the interests of voteless and voiceless industry.
I remember very well the 1935 Election when in Sunderland we lost control of the council to the Socialists, and won the General Election which followed the next week. A lady came into my committee rooms, whom we knew had voted Socialist the previous week. We asked why she had come to us when she had voted Socialist the previous week. She said, "The Socialists know how to spend the money, so I voted Socialist last week. 'the Conservatives know better than anybody how to get it, and I am going to vote for them tomorrow."
That, I think, is what happens. I do not think the industrialist has much chance of getting representation upon the

local councils. Taken over the country as a whole, if we maintain the principle that we have no taxation without representation, then industry should have 12½per cent. representation upon local authorities. But in my own constituency the position is much worse, as I have already pointed out. In Stretford, industry will bear 30 per cent. of the rates and in Urmston it will hear 42 per cent., yet it will have no means of making its voice felt.
It therefore seems to me that if we are to continue with this proposal to rerate industry, there are some grounds why industry should be given some special franchise and so have direct representation upon the councils. I know it would be very difficult to frame such a scheme, but I feel that if industry is to bear this large proportion of the rates it should have some voice in expenditure. I therefore hope that my right hon. Friend will devise a way in which industry may have a direct voice in local government.

9.43 p.m.

Mr. Percy Morris: The Minister has already had many indications that his proposals find little acceptance, and I trust that as a result of today's debate they will be recast in several important respects.
Other hon. Members have dealt with the variations in the structure of local government machinery, but as there is little material alteration suggested in the county boroughs—I am thinking not of the counties, but of the county boroughs—I shall not pursue that aspect, although I am very glad that in his opening speech the Minister clarified the point to which the County Councils' Association has drawn his attention, namely, the figure of 100,000 as a minimum for county conurbations.
Incidentally, the right hon. Gentleman referred to the fact that there are two commissions, one for England and one for Wales, but I wonder whether he would say whether he is accepting the recommendation that one of the members of the Welsh commission will be able to speak Welsh. That is very important in several respects and I shall be obliged if he will let me know that at some time or other.
If the block grant is not intended to be an economy axe, what other purpose


can it serve? The supposed intention is to increase the independence of local authorities. That, if I may say so, is an ultra-modern version of, "'Will you come into my parlour?' said the spider to the fly", because the right hon. Gentleman knows that the Government will always have the whip hand. In fact, they have threatened us by implication at least in paragraph 2 of Annex D to the White Paper that they will reduce the rate deficiency grant if they think expenditure is excessive, which means that on all occasions the Government will be judge and jury.
The plain truth is that owing to the failure of the Government's economic policy, we are rapidly drifting to another "Geddes Axe" or May Committee, with their consequential inequalities and injustices. I should like to endorse the appeal which has been made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, East (Mr. Blenkinsop)in respect of mental hospitals. The Minister has had a wide experience of local government and has given attention to the Report on mental health. He knows the tragic circumstances of thousands of hospital patients and the desperate need for accommodation and more modern equipment. I therefore sincerely hope that he will yield to the plea made by my hon. Friend, because the urgency of that problem cannot be over-emphasised.
It is surely common ground that the educational services are likely to suffer most under the block grant system. They can escape only if given sole priority and if every other serviec is neglected, but that, of course, would be an impossible position for any local authority to adopt. Therefore, local education authorities are bound to experience major difficulties. They would not be free agents, because the Minister has made his position perfectly clear. Indeed, the present Minister of Education seems to be in a very militant mood. If I may quote something he has said:
Ever since I have joined the Ministry, I have been conscious of a whispering campaign that we were spending too much on education. Well, I am not going to be airy about it. I propose to say in quite categorical terms that this assertion represents approximately the opposite of the truth. But in this general issue of extravagance, I am spoiling for a fight, and I intend to win it.

In another speech, the noble Lord said:
But on one thing I will not compromise. Administration is for the local authority. Minimum standards are a question for me, and I will never surrender the duties of promoting education and of controlling and directing educational policy put upon me by Parliament. It must be my duty while making every allowance for variety of pattern to minimise, so far as I can, differences in standards of performance, differences, that is, in the quality of educational opportunity betwen locality and locality.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Sir Edward Boyle): May I ask the hon. Gentleman from what document he is quoting? I should like to have that excellent anthology of extracts from my noble Friend's speeches for wider distribution.

Mr. Morris: I am quite certain that the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education is speaking with his tongue in his cheek.

Sir E. Boyle: No, I am not.

Mr. Morris: If not, I forgive him. I am quoting from a questionnaire, containing questions very difficult to answer, issued by the National Union of Teachers. I have had these questions put to me, and I cannot answer them. I think that the appropriate person to answer is either the right hon. Gentleman or the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education. The Parliamentary Secretary will not doubt the authenticity of the quotations I have made. In fact, there are a number of very salient points that will have to be dealt with later.

Mr. I. J. Pitman: May I help the hon. Gentleman? It was part of a speech made at Margate to the whole assembled conference of the National Union of Teachers, and was made by the noble Lord the Minister of Education. I cannot see why anybody should doubt that this was a genuine indication of policy.

Mr. Morris: No matter where the speech was made, the substance of it is equally relevant today as it was then, and in fact it is a contradiction of the position put by the right hon. Gentleman the Minister of Housing and Local Government. The point I am making is that the local authorities will have no more authority on expenditure under the block grant. The Minister can dictate and the


local authorities will have to obey, and, presumably, will have to find very much more money than hitherto. I have the honour to be one of the representatives of a blitzed area. We are striving in every possible way to overtake the repairs and works of modernisation made necessary by enemy action, in addition to extending our schools programme. We have done much work by direct labour, but there are occasions when expenditure exceeds estimates, entirely as a result of circumstances beyond the control of the local authority. In such circumstances, the Minister has refused to allow the excess to rank for grant. The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education may recall a particular case. He wrote to me in very genial terms about it, but I think that he was a little conscience stricken, because, when I saw him afterwards in one corridoir, he preferred to go to another. I think that he felt that he would like to have written to me in different terms.
When the local authority carries out a contract by direct labour for educational services and exceeds the estimates, the Minister will not allow the excess to rank for grant. If, perchance, as has happened on more than one occasion, the work is carried out well within the estimates and the authority effects an economy, the Minister declines to give the authority the necessary credit. He has it both ways in every respect.
There are certain questions, as I said earlier, which have been put by the National Union of Teachers to me and to other hon. Members. I pass them on, in the hope that we shall have satisfactory replies from the Government. First,
What will be the total of the general grant for the first period? Nobody knows.
Will future grants be depressed to such a level as to throw an impossible burden on local authorities? Nobody knows.
What will be the exact effect on rates in any area? Nobody knows.
How much are prices to rise before an interim review takes place? Nobody knows.
Is the Government contemplating the further re-rating of industry?

Mr. Roderic Bowen: Nobody knows.

Mr. Morris: It all comes to this, that there will be a haggle between the local authority and the Treasury, and those of us who have had experience of that kind

of thing realise how much delay and frustration will take place. It is the uncertainty and ambiguity of the whole thing which distresses hon. Members. We trust that, as a result of the debate today and tomorrow and of further consideration, new proposals will be put forward for the reorganisation of local government which will give a far greater measure of satisfaction to all concerned not only in local authority work generally but with education in particular.

9.53 p.m.

Mr. James Ramsden: I hope that the hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. P. Morris)will forgive me if I do not follow him closely. I wish to use the few minutes remaining to me to make one or two brief points about the White Paper on Functions.
We have had reference today to what I think The Times called the dogfight which is alleged to exist between counties and county districts on this question of powers. I would say on that to my right hon. Friend the Minister of Housing and Local Government, that the principal representations which I have had from the main local authority in my area come from one who is not only chairman of the finance committee of that authority, a non-county borough, but who, in addition, has been intimately connected with the finances of the West Riding County Council over a number of years. I stress that, because I should not like it to be thought that the views I am about to put forward are designed to advance one sectional interest at the expense of another.
In the first place, we are very concerned that the Minister should have plumped for delegation rather than outright conferment of powers. I understood that, at one time, it had been fairly well agreed between the local authority associations that conferment should be the rule.
My right hon. Friend will be well aware of the objections to delegation which are entertained by the county districts. They have been enlarged upon sufficiently today. I would only say that the system of delegation is admitted to be expensive. In the West Riding County Council area alone delegation for the function of planning costs about£97,000 a year, and planning is only one of the functions involved.


Those who have experience of this system feel that if the Minister adopted the system of conferment he would make it possible for better value for money to be obtained. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be able to give an assurance that, in the further talks which I understand he is to have with the local authority associations, he will reopen the question of conferment versus delegation.
The next point that I wish to put to my right hon. Friend, which has also been aired during the debate, concerns the test figure of 60,000 in respect of the level of population which he is advancing as one criterion for whether or not certain powers should be conferred. The White Paper proposes 60,000 as the test of whether powers should be delegated or conferred—whichever it is to be—as of right. That is, surely, the point. The White Paper admits that population is not to be the only criterion. It would be obviously absurd if it were, and if the Minister insisted on a bare figure of population and ignored considerations of rateable value, administrative record, and so on.
The point is that, as these proposals stand, without a population of 60,000, a county borough, as in the case of my own, has to go more or less cap in hand to the county council and ask for the powers. I urge upon the Minister, as others have done this afternoon, that he should consider reducing the qualifying figure to at any rate 50,000. My right hon. Friend may reply that if he did that local authorities with populations of 40,000 to 50,000 might well ask him for a similar concession. I can only reply to that objection that the figure of 50,000 has been unanimously agreed by the A.M.C. Their members are agreed that this is a suitable figure. They have not so far presented any objection to the decision of the A.M.C. to advocate that figure.

Mr. David Gibson-Watt: Can my hon. Friend advance any real argument why the case for a non-county borough with a population of 50,000, which is efficient, should be any stronger than that of a non-county borough of 30,000 or 31,000, which is equally efficient?

Mr. Ramsden: Obviously, there must be a test figure. That was the difficulty in which my right hon. Friend found himself.
I am supporting the figure of 50,000 because it is one which has commended itself to the Association of Municipal Corporations, on which my authority is represented. I realise that in the White Paper my right hon. Friend has been in some difficulty in respect of the question of functions. He has had to put up, as it were, a blueprint for discussion, and in so doing he has been forced to work within a more or less rigid framework of uniformity.
I hope that the eventual solution which may be arrived at in these cases will be more ad hoc and pay more regard to particular cases and to local conditions. If this is so, and if this is what is in my right hon. Friend's mind, I hope he will be able to say so at the end of this debate and reassure those whose apprehensions have been aroused by some of these proposals as they stand.

10.0 p.m.

Mr. G. Lindgren: We are now coming towards the end of the first day of this important debate on the future of local government. As one would expect, most of the speeches today have revolved around the experiences of the Members concerned. Naturally, we all speak from our experience in local government, or experience of the local authorities associated with our constituencies.
We have had three excellent maiden speeches, two from the other side of the House, from the hon. Member for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North (Mr. R. W. Elliott)and from the hon. Member for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke)and, on this side of the House, from my hon. Friend the Member for East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice). If I may particularise, his contribution was excellent and I join with other hon. Members in hoping that we shall often hear him and the other hon. Members in our debates.
The Minister said that the present system of local government had been in force for about seventy years. During that time there have, of course, been modifications and adaptations from time to time. The general structure as we know it today has, as the White Paper says, borne the stress of time and the development in the local government services extremely well. War-time was one


of the heaviest periods for local government and local government services stood that strain exceedingly well. Equally, no one will deny that there are features of our present system, both in structure and finance, which are unsatisfactory and which should be changed.
The question, therefore, is: what are the defects in our present system of local government and do the proposals in the three White Papers contribute towards solving the problems of local government? Quite bluntly, I say that they do not. They make hardly any contribution. The Minister said that this was a bold overhaul of the machine of local government. Lord help us when he is timid if this is bold! This is a mouse, not an elephant. The Minister has tried to offend no one and the trouble is that he has pleased no one. One starts to tackle the problem in altogether the wrong spirit if, with all the prejudices which are hound to be involved, one approaches it on that basis, seeking the complete agreement of all the local authority associations.
Let us examine the two White Papers dealing with area and status and with functions. They merely tinker with the problem. First, the Minister fixes certain population figures, 60,000 and 100,000, an then says that, although he has fixed those figures, if there is an authority with a population a little less and another authority with a population less still, then they are not precluded from being given delegation or other powers. He says that 100,000 is the population for county boroughs, but that, although he has fixed that figure, if there are others with populations below 100,000 he is prepared to consider them; and that all he means is that if there is an authority with a population of 100,000 then it is almost a foregone conclusion that it will get county borough status.
One of my hon. Friends said, "Is it a foregone conclusion?" I query it on the same basis. Again, the Minister said practically nothing upon the point mentioned in the White Paper, namely, that the creation of county boroughs undermines the whole structure of county government and the two-tier system in many areas.
I now turn to the White Paper on finance. Instead of attempting to meet

the point about which I thought everybody was agreed—until I heard the Minister today—namely, that local authorities are carrying a very heavy burden of financial responsibility without adequate financial assistance, the right hon. Gentleman says that any future development in the services included within the general grant will have to be carried out of the general rate. So, instead of relieving local authorities of a financial burden, the Minister is adding to it in future.
The Government have been a nightmare to local authorities, In the early post-war days local authorities were a little disturbed at some of the restrictions placed upon them by a Labour Government, but they are now looking forward to the day when a Labour Government returns to power, because the greatest period of stability and progress which local government has had in this country was in the period from 1945 to 1951. Since the Government came to power financial burdens have been added to local authorities almost daily. Between 1951 and today interest rates have changed sixteen or seventeen times.
If a local authority is properly to plan its programme it must have some idea of what a scheme will cost it when it is completed. During the lifetime of this Tory Government, if a local authority has considered a scheme, by the time it has received its officers' reports the interest rates have risen and the cost has gone up; by the time it has gone to tender conditions have changed again; by the time the work has started they have changed again, and by the time the authority has finished the scheme they have changed again.
Not one local authority has been able to go ahead on any project with any degree of certainty—and they will be more uncertain still as a result of these White Papers. Having placed all this added financial burden upon local authorities by way of increased interest charges, the Government are making no contribution towards helping them to bear those added burdens.
Let us look at the functions of local government. It has only two functions. First, it has to provide the services which are essential to the community, where private enterprise fails to provide them, or cannot provide them at a profit. Its second function is to protect the consumer


of a service against fraud or exploitation where private enterprise does provide that service. The services which are essential to a community and which private enterprise cannot provide at a profit include housing, education, parks and open spaces, sporting facilities, water and sanitation, police and fire protection. They are essential services to the public which other people cannot provide at a profit. If they could, local government would not be allowed to tackle them.
Turning to the second function, the protection of the consumer against frauds, I would point out that we did not have weights and measures inspectors because shopkeepers were giving overweight. We did not need food and drug inspectors because shopkeepers were selling pure food. Equally, we did not need building and sanitary inspectors because the building contractors and private owners were doing the right thing by the community. So they are the functions of local government.
We have today a further example from the Minister of the concept of local government. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned new towns. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison)also proposed to refer to them and to the statement of the Minister, but he felt that his speech was becoming too long so he cut out that reference. Today, we have had mention of new towns provided by national finance. There is profit in land ownership and property ownership, in the development of estates and in the industrial and commercial development of housing. Of course, this Tory Government proposes to hand that over to some other authority. The local authority cannot have anything out of which it is likely to make a profit.
In some of the new towns water and sanitation have been provided by the development corporation, but that will not be handed over to private enterprise. That will be handed back to the local authority as services which are unprofitable. Services which are profitable will be handed to the right hon. Gentleman's friends in private enterprise. In the days of the Labour Government, they talked about "jobs for the boys." I do not wonder—they coined the phrase. At some other time I hope there will be an oppor

tunity to debate the future of the new towns. Hon. Members on this side of the House do not propose to allow these national assets, which were built up by national finance, to be lost.
I am proud of the Labour Government of 1945 to 1951 which made it possible for new conceptions of living conditions to be provided in the form of 14 new towns. That was done amid the difficult period of the post-war reconstruction. We say that those assets were provided by the people for the people, and they should be maintained for the people. The profits which have accrued have resulted from people going to the new towns. It is because people have gone to the new towns that profit has been created. It was not created by private enterprise and it should go back to the people who have helped to build those towns.
Although hon. Gentlemen opposite may say that those profits have gone back to the people who helped to build the towns, if in fact new towns are sold off while the development is still taking place, the future development will be enjoyed by private enterprise. I could give examples from new towns where land was bought originally for£40 or£50 an acre and today it is being sold for£20,000 and£25,000 an acre. The change in land values is due to the fact that when it was sold for£40 an acre there was no one living there, and now there are between 20,000 and 25,000 people living there. The people being there has created the value.
The ordinary citizen looks to local government for the services which I mentioned earlier. He wants a home and schools so that his youngsters may be educated. He looks for parks and open spaces for the children to play in. He looks for opportunities for physical recreation, for swimming pools and facilities for other sports. He requires adequate police and fire protection and all the other things. I wish to make this point, which may be considered controversial, but I am not altogether unknown as a person who is controversial.
From the way some people talk and have spoken even in this debate, including the Minister, one would think that the present general structure of local government is sacrosanct. The average citizen does not care twopence whether he lives in a county borough, an urban


district or whatever we call it. He does not care whether it has a mayor or a chairman. or is a one-tier or a two-tier system. He wants service—his home, schools, parks, a swimming pool—provided at a reasonable cost. It is our job to provide a structure which will make those services possible at reasonable cost.
The average citizen does not care whether Queen Anne slept somewhere on a particular night or who determines the particular boundary. The average citizen laughs when he crosses the road from one authority to another and finds a different set of conditions obtaining. Only members and officials of local authorities, Members of Parliament and other such folk talk about preserving ancient historical associations.

Mr. J. C. Jennings: Why not?

Mr. Lindgren: Because what the citizen wants is service. It is no good having a bad house and poor schools in historic associations.

Mr. Jennings: Why not have both?

Mr. Lindgren: Because a large number of local authorities, including many historic ones, have not the financial resources to provide adequate services within their areas. If they cannot do so, they must be superseded by some authority that will provide the services.
Are services like education, housing, planning, police and fire protection to be national services locally administered, with the citizen having the right to expect a standard of service roughly comparable with other areas, or are they to be locally financed with no relationship to national standards, with the standard of service varying from area to area? I take the former view, that these should be national services locally administered. The national Exchequer has never made as large a contribution to them as I thought was necessary. Most Governments have also taken the view that these are national services, but most Governments have disagreed with local representatives about the proportion of the costs to be centrally borne.
We had an interjection from a Government supporter who is an educationist. When secondary education was first introduced there was the famous Cockerton judgment against West Ham Borough

Council because the council provided secondary education, although, in 1902, it had not the authority to do so. The Government of the day stopped that local authority from taking the initiative. Some of my hon. Friends have been Members of boards of guardians when the guardians looked after the poor. Some of my hon. Friends had to go to prison when they were really looking after the poor. The Government of the day, a Tory Government, took away from the guardians the right to administer the Poor Law.
We have the same sort of Tory Government today; they never change. They took away the power of the boards of guardians. My right hon. Friend the Member for Poplar (Mr. Key)and others went to prison then because they were providing the poor with sustenance and a Tory Government did not want that.
I did not agree because I think that that was essentially a local government service, provided by local government services, but local government representatives in Coventry said that the Civil Defence arrangements of this Government were foolish and refused to operate them. The Tory Government talk about freedom for the local authorities, but they superseded Coventry City Council and put in directors of Civil Defence.

Mr. Pitman: I am trying to follow the argument of the hon. Member, but in one case he says that it is a national service, locally administered, that he wants; and it seems that the Post Office or telephones are a national service that is locally administered and that is what he wants—[Interruption.] Let the hon. Member make clear what he wants, because in the case relating to Poplar he complains that it was not a local service but a national one and that the local administration was over-ruled.

Mr. Lindgren: I could not have made myself clear. I believe that local government is the administration locally of national services that the Government of the day determines. After all, local government works within a framework provided by Parliament and it cannot go outside that framework. It is Parliament's job to set up that framework and set national standards for the services. Then the local authority administers them. The


quarrel has always been on the question of cost, but now this Government claim to act on the basis of freedom for local authorities

Mr. Robert Jenkins: The hon. Member has mentioned one of the services which is rendered by local authorities, the fire service. During the war there was a National Fire Service. After the war the National Fire Service was given back to local authorities after a speech made by the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), who was then Home Secretary. In other words, after the war the Labour Government gave back to local authorities something that had, in fact, been a national service and the Government paid the total cost, but now local authorities are to pay a proportion.

Mr. Lindgren: I shall break my speech to deal with that interjection, because the hon. Member is knowledgeable in local government. He is so knowledgeable that I suggest he ought to remember that the fire service was taken over during the war, and, because local authorities did not like losing a service they had administered, they asked for a promise that when the war was over the local services should be returned. The then Home Secretary, not a Labour Home Secretary, made that promise.

Mr. James Griffiths: He was Sir John Anderson.

Mr. Jenkins: It was the right hon. Member for Lewisham, South.

Mr. Lindgren: Whoever it was, the Labour Government honoured that pledge.
A lot has been said today about education. That is a service which ought to be of such a standard that every child in the country should have a reasonable expectation of the same educational opportunity. It is a 'national service. Assertions have been made today that there will be provisions for the future cost of education to be borne by local authorities.
Is not the fire service a national service? The hon. Member for Dulwich (Mr. Robert Jenkins)mentioned that during the war we took the service over. Is it part of the defence force of this country or not? Can he tell me why

the police force, which receives a 50 per cent. grant, is still within the grant aid, whereas the Fire Service, which receives only 25 per cent., the lowest of all, is excluded?

Mr. Robert Jenkins: The answer is that during the war, when the Home Office took over the fire service, the grant paid was 100 per cent. When the Labour Party gave it back to the local authorities it paid only 25 per cent.

Mr. Lindgren: I agree, but the Government are now taking 25 per cent. away. In future, the fire service is to be covered out of the general grant. I can see what will happen. There will be a conflict between the education committee and the fire brigade committee. If the education committee wins, the standards of fire protection will fall. If there is a fire at a local school and the local fire brigade has insufficient manpower or equipment to deal with the outbreak, there will be an outcry about loss of life due to parsimonious expenditure by the local authority on its fire services.
I know hon. Members opposite too well. When I was associated with the Ministry of Civil Aviation, the biggest fight I had with them was in making provision for fire and crash units. They complained that firemen were standing about during the day.
The fire service is an important service in this country. Unfortunately not long ago we had a national dispute in the Service. It was called the "spit and polish strike", but the basis of it was that the police grant was 50 per cent. whereas the grant for the fire service was only 25 per cent. The local authorities said, "If you give us 50 per cent., as you do for the police, we will meet the cost of the award made by the Whitley Council".
Having been taken from my brief by that interjection, I return to it to suggest that these are national services and that the citizens of this country have a right to expect a standard of service based on equity between one part of the country and another. The Government's proposals mean that, in future, local authorities will have great difficulty in meeting the cost of the services, that they will let some of the standards fall and that we shall not have the general standard of services which we ought to have. All this is in the name of freedom.
I expect that the Parliamentary Secretary, in his reply, will say that my example of the fire brigade and education committees will not arise in practice because the Government will keep the fire and education services up to standard by their control at key points. Although the Minister spoke for a very long time today, he did not say where that control on key points would be or what the key points were, and we are no wiser now than we were at the beginning about what the Government mean by this control of key points.
I am fairly certain that within the right hon. Gentleman's Ministry the financial effects of these proposals on every local authority in the country have been worked out. Many local authorities have worked them out for themselves. I am certain that the Ministry has them.
Why have they not been published? If we are discussing these proposals, why not have their effects published as well? I may be unduly suspicious. I may not be giving the Minister the credit to which he is entitled. From his past actions, I think that that is justified. But, in the absence of the publication of the figures and of their effect on local authorities, I think it is fair to assume that, in the main, they are to the disadvantage of the local authorities, and that if they were published now there would be such a riot that the Bill which the right hon. Gentleman is proposing to prepare would not be allowed to be prepared.
The excuse that the Minister makes for the change in grant formula is completely outside my own experience. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kettering completely refuted the suggestion, and quoted authorities to show that the percentage grant has not caused local authorities to be spendthrifts. My experience has been that it has very often worked the other way; that local authorities have, at each budget review of their own finances, cut out many grant-aided projects that should have been included, because of the likely effect on the rates.
Never once in my experience of local government, which extends over all types—borough, urban and county—have I known members of a committee, chairmen of committees, or officers of local authorities, saying, as one hon. Member opposite suggested they said, "This is a

grant-aided service. Let us do all the things we want to do, and some that we do not want to do"——

Mr. Robert Jenkins: Thousands of times.

Mr. Lindgren: Then all I can say is that I have been fortunate in the local authorities that I have served on, and the hon. Member has been unfortunate. As a member of a local authority, and particularly as chairman of committees, my experience has always been of a fight at the annual budget meeting with the chairman of the finance committee to put through the proposals of my own committee in such a way as to meet the requirements of the finance committee. That committee has told us, "This is the rate that we consider can be borne by the ratepayer," and we have had to cut our budget to that rate. I have never known services to be undertaken that were not necessary——

Mr. Pitman: If the consideration of who pays for it is so irrelevant, why is the block grant likely to cut expenditure?

Mr. Lindgren: If the block grant is so irrelevant why is it likely to cut expenditure? It will, because, at the moment, of course, if there is an increase in teachers' wages—[An HON. MEMBER: "Salaries."] If the word "wages" is good enough for one, why is it not good enough for someone else? No matter what it is called, it does not buy any more in the shops, and under a Tory Government it has less value every week.
If a local authority is at present incurring expenditure, 50 per cent. of which it meets and 50 per cent. of which comes from the Exchequer grant, it means that only 50 per cent. comes from the local rate charge. If, after this, it all goes on the local rate charge then, in fact, it will mean—as it means now, very often—that local authorities will tend not to incur expenditure beyond a certain point.

Mr. Robert Jenkins: Hear, hear.

Mr. Lindgren: The hon. Gentleman says, "Hear, hear," but we say that that is what this is intended to do, to stop local authorities providing that standard of service which the ratepayers have a right to expect——

Mr. Pitman: Mr. Pitman rose——

Mr. Lindgren: It is not fair on the Parliamentary Secretary to give way—but I do not mind if the hon. Gentleman does not.

Mr. Pitman: If the hon. Gentleman is so certain of his ground that the 50 per cent. is paid by the Exchequer is not influencing expenditure, then let him clear up the point, because he cannot have it both ways. He cannot claim that the 50 per cent. issue is irrelevant, that finance is not taken into consideration, and then turn round and say that the question of money under the block grant is so relevant that the money will not be spent by the authority.

Mr. Lindgren: The hon. Gentleman has had greater educational opportunities than I have had. I only went to night school. Perhaps that is why it is clear to me at this time of night.
In fairness to the Parliamentary Secretary, I must sit down now, although there is much more that I should like to say. These proposals make no contribution at all to the problems which face local authorities today. They are far too timid. There ought to be a much greater amalgamation of smaller authorities, particularly rural authorities with urban and borough authorities, where the standard of service is low and cannot be provided with the rateable value that is available to them.
Equally, on the financial side, this will mean the holding back of local government services, the varying of standards between one part of the country and another, and I hope that when the vote is taken tomorrow night the House will take the opportunity of expressing that point of view. In any case, I ask the Government to think again, to take these proposals back and bring forward other proposals far more bold and revolutionary in the amalgamation and structure of local government, and equally more revolutionary in the provision of finance for local government.

10.42 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education (Sir Edward Boyle): The hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Lindgren)in his rumbustious and knowledgeable speech raised two points to which I will endeavour to reply. The first was that there should be national standards of education. The

second was that the amount of the general grant must take into account the need to develop the education service. On both those points I shall hope to give him, from his point of view, a completely satisfactory reply.
Before saying anything else, however, I feel that it would be the wish of the House that I should add my congratulations to the hon. Members for Bristol, West (Mr. Robert Cooke), for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, North (Mr. R. W. Elliott)and East Ham, North (Mr. Prentice)who have pleased the House very much today with their excellent maiden speeches, the more acceptable, I think, because in total time they took twenty-nine minutes; this will make the House look forward all the more to hearing them on a future occasion.
This has been a very good day's debate. I am sure we are all grateful to my right hon. Friend for the very full and painstaking way in which he announced the Government's proposals, and we all immensely enjoyed the speech of the hon. and learned Member for Kettering (Mr. Mitchison)which followed it.
I should like to add this personal note before replying to the debate. It is now almost six months since I first had the opportunity of replying in this House on behalf of my noble Friend the Minister of Education. During this period of six months I have had the opportunity not only to listen in this House to hon. Members with a far wider knowledge of the subject than I shall ever have, but I have also visited nearly twenty local authorities in many parts of the country.
I have not the very least doubt that education is today perhaps the most important of all our social services, nor that the revolution in education which followed the 1944 Act of my right hon. Friend the Lord Privy Seal has proved possibly the most important single instalment of social reform during this century. Furthermore, I doubt whether the people of this country even now fully realise quite how much we owe to the teachers during this difficult period of the bulge. I hope that, however much hon. Members may disagree with the proposals of the Government, they will be in no doubt as to the sincere concern which my noble Friend and I both feel for the morale of the teaching profession and, indeed, for


all those who bear direct responsibility for our system of education.
Let me start by enunciating one principle with which I think there will certainly be no disagreement. The Government favour the principle of the distribution of power and of the balance of power which was laid down in the Act of 1944. They regard it as their duty to reconcile this principle with the necessary development of the education service.
Furthermore, I think that there is fairly widespread agreement, not least in local government circles, that local government is today declining in status and in effectiveness. The Government believe that an important cause of this decline is the growing dependence of local authorities on specific Exchequer grants, to which my right hon. Friend referred. The main trouble about specific percentage grants is that they must inevitably undermine the responsibility of an authority for allocating its total resources in accordance with its judgment of the needs of its area.
The hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Kettering made the rather remarkable statement that the Government's proposals would lead, as he put it, to battles in the council chamber. Surely, if local government is to have any vitality at all, that is just what ought to happen far more than it does today. After all, the chairman of the finance committee, to whom the hon. and learned Gentleman referred, has only one vote just like the chairman of the education committee. Both have to argue in the same assembly, and I should have thought that it was a very bad thing if either one or the other always won the dispute. If the Government's proposals lead to increased debate and increased vitality in the council chambers, the Government certainly will not he disappointed at that.
I confess that it is a matter of regret to me that we do not in these days ever seem to have an all night sitting in this House.

Mr. William Ross: The Scots do.

Sir E. Boyle: I think that there was occasionally something to be said for them, and I myself regard it as a good thing that the City of Birmingham, once a year, when it debates the estimates, invariably has a sitting until three or four in the morning.

Mr. Moyle: If the Parliamentary Secretary is so keen on there being this local fight, why has the Minister kept the police out of it?

Sir E. Boyle: I will answer about the police at once. The very large proportion of police expenditure incurred by authorities in the Metropolitan Police district made it quite impossible to include in the weighted population formula any weighting which would produce an equitable result for all authorities. The primary reason the police have been left out is that it was impossible to devise a formula which would work fairly. Many people have had a shot at it, but it has not been possible to devise one which would work reasonably and fairly in respect of the police.
It really is no answer to point out with regard to education that it represents, in money terms, a very high proportion of the percentage grants which it is proposed to replace by a general grant. On the contrary, it is precisely because these percentage grants for education have grown so large that one cannot help feeling concern about the future of education as a local government service. What I propose to say now is, I know, controversial, but I can only give the House my own impressions which I have gained during the last six months.
It has seemed to me that local education committees in general are showing an increasing capacity to forge closer links with the Ministry of Education than with their respective county councils or county boroughs. Of course, I know that there are those who would not regard such a development as a had thing; there are those who would like to take education altogether out of local politics. But I think that it is important to remember that those people are not merely opposed to the Government's proposals but they are really passing a vote of no confidence in local government, at any rate so far as the education service is concerned.
As against their view, the Government stand firm by their convictions. First, we ought, as a matter of principle, to make a greater reality of local government. Secondly, we can fulfil this principle without sacrificing the specific objective of a flourishing and developing education service.
Turning, now to some of the objections which have been brought against the Government's proposals, let me make it absolutely clear that I fuily realise that anxieties are felt in many quarters about this matter, and not only by educationists but also by a number of hon. Members with long experience in local government. My noble Friend and I have done our best to keep abreast of all the contributions which are being currently made on this controversy. One question which has been asked is this: in so far as we are to have local option, will not this lead directly to variation in the standards of education provided?
That point was raised very ably by the hon. Member for Wellingborough. Surely, whatever else the system of percentage grants has achieved, no one could possibly claim, or, I should have thought, would wish to claim, that it led to uniformity in educational standards. Historically, our experience has always been in the opposite direction. In any case, I have always thought that variety was the very lifeblood of our national educational system.
So far as uniformity is concerned, surely the really important thing is that there must be standards below which no local education authority shall be allowed to fall. I have said on a previous occasion in the House, and I repeat the words tonight, that the Government see no reason why the change in the method of calculating grant should affect the apportionment of statutory responsibility between the Minister and the local authorities. There may well have to be certain more or less technical amendments to the Education Acts to take account of the change in the grant system, but the Minister's powers to lay down minimum standards, and, in the last resort, to enforce them, will remain. I can assure the House that there is no question at all of going back on that pledge.
I now come to my next point. Granted entirely what I have said about minimum standards, the question is then put: how is the Minister to secure these minimum standards in things which are not susceptible to what might be called quantitative measurements, such as the provision of books—a matter in which the hon. Member for Fulham (Mr. M. Stewart)is very

rightly interested—science equipment, and so on?
Surely the first point to notice here is that the existence of a percentage grant obviously does not in itself solve the problem. Even at the present time there are authorities which are generous in these respects and those which are not so generous.
The second point is that the powers of my noble Friend to supervise and encourage authorities in these matters will certainly be no weaker under the conditions of a general grant than they are today under the conditions of a percentage grant. My noble Friend will still have his powers of inspection, which are of the highest importance.
In the last resort—I would emphasise this—both my noble Friend and the local education authorities have to rely on public opinion and public interest in education, and, after all, this public interest is growing all the time.
Since I have mentioned the subject of books, I would say that I was most encouraged to find the other day when opening a new school in the Midlands that the parents of the children at the school had clubbed together and presented a large number of extra books to the school library. That seemed to be an absolutely admirable thing to have happened.

Dr. Horace King: Does not the hon. Gentleman realise that under his system of grants, which provides an average grant for, for example, what is spent on books, any authority which spends less on books will benefit at the expense of a progressive authority which spends more on them?

Sir E. Boyle: The hon. Gentleman does not invalidate my point that there are variations under the present system, which does not secure uniformity. My noble Friend will still have powers of persuasion, inspection and supervision under the new system.
I now want to say just a word about those aspects of local education which most often excite criticism in the local Press. I am thinking of the equipment and furnishing of schools, and so on. I am one of those who think very definitely that standards of beauty and design are things which concern everyone in our


society. For that reason, I am never too happy about that rather over-worked phrase "the frills" which one still hears fairly frequently. I will not make a point about this, but, personally, I am sorry when I hear that phrase used. At the same time, it will not be a wholly bad thing that local education committees will have a greater incentive to persuade both their colleagues and the general public that the expense which they are incurring is worth while and that they are getting good value for money.
Now let me turn for a few moments from the principle of the general grant to the question of the amount of the general grant. Here again, I remind the House of what has been said more than once on other occasions, namely, that the Government fully recognise, as my noble Friend has pointed out in several speeches that expenditure on education must continue to increase. Development of the education service is an important element in the Government's social and economic policy and it will remain so.
Secondly, the Government do not propose that the burden of the cost of the development should be borne exclusively by the rates. In fixing the amount of the general grant the Government will take account of the need to develop the education services and I can assure the House that we will aim at keeping a fair and reasonable balance between grant and rate-borne expenditure. It is not something about which it would be sensible to be precise.
I know that in this context some concern has been expressed about paragraph 26 of the White Paper on finance, and I particularly wanted to bring in this, because it has been widely noted. The paragraph says:
It is most important to reduce this dependence of local government on Exchequer grants if it can possibly be done.
I ask hon. Members to note the context of that paragraph. I can assure the House that those words are used in reference not to the general grant, but to the rerating of industry and to the Government's proposal. I should have thought it inherent in our whole approach to the problem of local government finance that the product of rerating should be offset by some reduction in grants.
Of course, as sub-paragraph (c)of the key paragraph 19 points out, when the

amount of the general grant is being negotiated, the Government will have to bear in mind not only the need for development in any particular service, but the general state of the economy as well. Surely there is nothing wrong with that. However keen we may be to develop the education service, we ought not to be too upset if local authorities want to expand at a faster rate than the total sum of our resources will allow. In a democratic society in which more and more people realise the value of freedom—after all, the idea of increased range of choice is surely the very essence of democratic society—there is always bound to be a conflict of this kind.
Lastly, I come to the argument—and we had this from the hon. and learned Member for Kettering, and my noble Friend and I fully realise that this is a serious argument—that while proposals for general grant secure greater certainty for the Government, there will be a greater measure of uncertainty for the local authorities. The hon. and learned Member put this point very fairly in the concluding parts of his speech. However, it would be very unwise to under-value the assurance given in paragraphs 19 (b)and 20 of the White Paper. In the first place, paragraph 19 (b)specifically provides for the grant to take into account any general rise in costs due to inflation or, as the White Paper put it,
…factors beyond the control of local authorities…
The House may feel that the specific assurance given in paragraph 20 is even more important. That paragraph recognises:
…that there may be unforeseen increases during the grant period of such magnitude that they cannot reasonably be carried in full by the local authorities. In this event the Government will be prepared by way of exception to consider interim revision of the grant.
I am sure that the chief anxiety in the minds of many people is the prospect of an increased Burnham award coming in the middle of a grant period. An award of this kind would certainly come within the category of increases to which paragraph 20 refers.
All I have been saying so far concerns the general changes affecting the country as a whole. So far as individual authorities may have to deal with circumstances beyond their own control, for example, an increase in population, this should be


covered by the formula, but if a local authority embarks upon a deliberate expansion of the education service as an act of local policy it is the deliberate intention of the Government, and it is inherent in their proposals, that this should in future be the local authority's own affair, in the matter of finance.
I think that I have time to reply to the several hon. Members who asked me about the abolition of divisional education executives. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if, owing to the lateness of the hour, I do not give way to an argument upon this subject, but I will try to answer the point. The proposal to abolish these executives follows naturally from the proposals agreed among representatives of the local authority associations themselves. These agreed proposals, in providing for some devolution of the functions vested in county councils, were based on the principle that any devolution should be to the elected councils of existing local government units, that is to say, the county district councils, and in the case of education this meant a delegation to appropriate county district councils and the abolition of divisional executives.
Do not let us forget that the cost of divisional executive administration amounts to between£3 million and£4 million, out of the local education authority total expenditure on administration of about£18 million a year—which is quite a high proportion. That expense is probably the chief single reason why administration has proved more costly in counties than in county boroughs.
My noble Friend and I fully realise the doubts which exist in the minds of educationists, but I believe that those doubts are due to the fact that many people, in their sincere concern with education, do not realise the revolution which is going on all the time in the nation's thinking. Today there is a much greater national passion for education than ever before. The controversy in the Press and elsewhere about the organisation of secondary education and the 11-plus examination is a clear sign of the extent to which people are alive to what education means. I think that under those circumstances we can, at the same time, aim at the principle of giving greater independence to local government and also achieve the objective of a developing and flourishing education service.

Mr. P. Morris: Can the Minister reply to my question about the constitution of the Welsh commission?

Sir E. Boyle: I will write to the hon. Member upon that subject, if I may. I have a note of the point that he made.

Debate adjourned.—[Mr. Oakshott.]

Debate to be resumed Tomorrow.

TOWN AND COUNTRY PLANNING (MINERALS)

10.58 p.m.

The Minister of Housing and Local Government and Minister for Welsh Affairs (Mr. Henry Brooke): I beg to move,
That the Town and Country Planning (Minerals)(Amendment)Regulations, 1957, dated 8th July, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 10th July, be approved.
These amending Regulations will correct a defect in the drafting of the main Regulations. I understand that it is just the same point which arises in the Scottish amending Regulations.

Mr. Speaker: I was wondering whether these and the Scottish Regulations—which seem to cover the same point—might be discussed together. They will remain separate Questions, and can be put separately.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: We have no objection, Sir.

Mr. Brooke: The main Regulations for England and Wales were made at the end of 1954 and came into effect on 1st January, 1955. What they do is to apply the provisions of the Town and Country Planning Acts to mineral operations. Paragraph 1 of Regulation 10 in the main Regulations provides for compensation to be payable for abortive expenditure incurred, including loss in respect of buildings, plant and machinery, when an application is refused for permission to continue mining operations in land adjoining land where mining operations have been carried out since 1937 in accordance with pre-1947 planning control. Paragraph 2 of the same Regulation is designed to say that if the conditions set out in paragraph 1 are fulfilled, but not otherwise, a further claim can be made for loss or damage, for example, in respect of disturbance, including loss of profits.
I am advised, though the matter has never come before the courts, to the best of my knowledge, that the drafting of Regulation 10 is defective and, consequently, that it is open to a different interpretation from what it has been understood and intended to mean. The reason why I have to ask the House to approve the amending Regulation is to remedy the defect in drafting and put the position beyond doubt.

11.2 p.m.

Mr. G. R. Mitchison: On this side of the House we have considered this matter. I think that substantially the same point is in both the English and the Scottish Regulations. We agree with the intentions of the Government. We see the necessity of the Regulations to give effect to those intentions.
As regards England and Wales, we take no objection at all. Perhaps I can save a little trouble for the Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland by saying that I am authorised to say, as I do with trepidation in Scottish affairs, that the Scottish attitude is the same as the English on this matter.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Town and Country Planning (Minerals)(Amendment)Regulations, 1957, dated 8th July, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 10th July, be approved.

Town and Country Planning (Minerals)(Amendment)(Scotland)Regulations, 1957, dated 8th July, 1957 [copy laid before the House, 10th July] approved.—[Mr. Nixon Browne.]

SCOTLAND (HOUSING)

11.4 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. J. Nixon Browne): I beg to move,
That the Housing (Payments for Well-Maintained Houses)(Scotland)Order, 1957, dated 18th July, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th July, be approved.
Between 11 p.m. on the night of 21st May and 3.30 a.m. on the morning of 22nd May this year the Scottish Standing Committee discussed in great detail Clause 20 of the Housing and Town Development (Scotland)Bill, which was given the Royal Assent on 17th July. It is under the authority of subsection (1)of that Section 20 that this Order is made.
As originally drafted, that Section proposed that this Order should have retrospective effect, as did the corresponding English Order made last year. The result of our discussion in Committee is that this Order is not retrospective in its effect, but operates from the day following its approval by both Houses.
The effect of the Order is to increase by three the multiplier for well-maintained payments made under Section 40 of the Housing (Scotland)Act, 1950, as extended by Section 20 of the Act of 1957 to which I have already referred, by local authorities in respect of well-maintained houses. These are houses in a clearance area acquired compulsorily, or houses subject to a clearance order, or well-maintained individual houses which are unfit and demolished, or closed, or acquired for repair by a local authority.
The owner, or anyone else who has spent money on the house, can, uncle; Section 40 of the 1950 Act, receive payment under the more favourable to him of two methods of calculation. Unless proof could be given of having spent a considerable sum on the house over the five years prior to the qualification for payment, the more favourable basis of calculation, and that usually used, was that the amount of the well-maintained payment be calculated by multiplying the rateable value by one and one-fifth, or two and two-fifths if the owner or a member of his family had lived in the house continuously for three years prior to the material date.
These multipliers are trebled by the Order and now become three and three-fifths and seven and one-fifth respectively. The present multipliers were fixed in 1935. The rateable values have not altered substantially since then, but the cost of repairs has increased at least threefold since. Hon. Members may ask what this Order will cost. Well-maintained payments are met by local authorities. There is no element of subsidy. In the last eleven years payments have been made in respect of only ten houses. That is about one in every 450 or 500 affected.
Now that the scope of payments has rightly been extended, more payments for well-maintained houses can be anticipated. If the pattern of clearance demolition and acquisition continues we can expect that in Scotland between 15 and 20 houses a year may qualify at a maximum average cost of£100 a house and a


total cost for Scotland of£1,500 to£2,000 a year. About half that, probably under£1,000 ar year, may fall on Glasgow.
As I promised in Committee, the local authorities associations have been consulted by letter and a meeting was offered. The Association of County Councils and the Association of Counties of Cities both made no observations. The Convention of Royal Burghs advised us that it did not consider that a meeting was necessary. We understand that the general feeling among the burghs is that a three-fold increase is overdue.
This Order gives justice to the few deserving cases concerned. It is correct for today's conditions. When the revaluation takes place in 1961 my right hon. Friend will have to look at the multipliers again and may ask the House to approve an amending Order.

11.7 p.m.

Mr. Thomas Fraser: The Joint Under-Secretary could not have heard the debate on local government earlier today. The Minister of Housing and Local Government and the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Education expressed the anxiety of the Government to give more powers to local authorities, to allow local authorities to spend their money as they think fit. That is what the Government have been asking all day, that local authorities should have more power.
This is an Order made by the Government instructing local authorities to pay three times the compensation they have hitherto paid for unfit houses which are to be demolished. Who pays the compensation? It is the ratepayers, the local authority, with no assistance from the Government at all. I should have thought the Joint Under-Secretary, had he listened to speeches made by his right hon. and hon. Friends today on behalf of the Government, would not have seen fit to ask for approval of this Order.
If the Government had merely taken the opportunity of saying to local authorities that the compensation they have been paying up to now was inadequate, notwithstanding the fact that the houses were unfit and were to be demolished, and given them power to pay a little more by way of compensation, one could have understood that, but here there is not just power to pay more but an

instruction to do so. This is put forward by a Tory Government which, all day long, have been saying they are anxious that the local authorities should have more power.
I ask the Joint Under-Secretary to give local authorities a little more power by withdrawing the Order and bringing in another if he thinks fit to increase compensation which local authorities may pay if they think fit. The local authorities would have power of decision in the matter instead of being instructed that they must pay a certain sum in compensation in respect of houses which are being demolished, and that the bill must be met out of the pockets of the ratepayers.

Mr. J. N. Browne: Because I thought that the hon. Member might raise that point, I gave him the cost of this provision. We reckon it at between£1,500 and£2,000 a year at the maximum. I think he is stretching comparison too far when he compares this little piece of "fair do's" for those concerned with the major debate, to part of which I have listened.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,
That the Housing (Payments for Well-Maintained Houses)(Scotland)Order, 1957, dated 18th July, 1957, a copy of which was laid before this House on 18th July, be approved.

CIVIC TRUST

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Hughes-Young.]

11.10 p.m.

Mr. Nigel Nicolson: All those who have been disturbed at the increasing defacement of our town and countryside by ill-planned development will have heard with relief of the recent formation of the Civic Trust. This body is wholly unofficial and does not depend to any extent upon Government funds, but as it is likely to be one of the most influential and, I hope, one of the most affluent of all the bodies concerned with good design and town planning, I am sure that the Ministry of Housing and Local Government will be keenly interested in its activities.
My main reason for raising the subject on the Adjournment is to ask the Minister how he thinks his Ministry can best


help the Trust and how the Trust can best help him. I think it would be fitting to begin with a tribute to the founder and first President of the Civic Trust, the present Minister of Defence. I am very glad and honoured to see that my right hon. Friend has found time to be present to listen to this short debate. It must so often happen to Ministers that they lay an egg only to see others hatch it, but in this case my right hon. Friend has prolonged his interest in good design and good planning beyond the period of his office at the Ministry of Housing and Local Government.
Two years ago, in a speech to the R.I.B.A., he said that he thought it would be a good thing if public opinion were mobilised to uphold and create beauty and declare war on ugliness. Instead of leaving it to others to take the first step, he himself took the initiative in suggesting to representatives of all existing bodies which deal with amenities and building that they should come together under a common umbrella in order to pool their experience and their ideas. Simultaneously, my right hon. Friend approached leaders of industry and asked them whether they would be willing to contribute to this cause. In neither venture was he disappointed.
That was the origin of the Civic Trust, which held its first meeting at Lambeth Palace last Saturday week. My right hon. Friend, as was only fitting, became the first President of the Trust, in his personal capacity.
The Trust had its origin in the existing and mounting resentment among the public against all forms of shoddy and inappropriate design in town and country, which the group of writers and architects around the Architectural Review have indelibly labelled as "Subtopia". The Trust came into existence as a result of the very sentiments it is designed to foster. Its main task, as I see it, is to reinforce and educate the public's dislike of what is bad in design and to translate into reality the widespread but often inarticulate yearning for what is good.
It seems to me that those who have had the main responsibility for the visual appearance of our town and country have not always been the same people who knew how best to achieve a pleasant result. The Trust might help those people if they will allow it to do so. I suggest that it can be

the link, in other words, "between those who care, and those who can". There are other bodies which have made attempts, often very successfully, to resist the onrush of Subtopia.
For example, there is the Council for the Preservation of Rural England, the Royal Fine Art Commission, and the Ministry of Housing and Local Government itself; but nobody who travels widely over our country could always be conscious that good design will invariably triumph over bad. Will another voluntary body succeed in making a deeper impression? I suggest that it will do so only if two requirements are fulfilled. First, if the Trust is not too modest, and, secondly, if it has the ungrudging and active support of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government. I would like to say a few words about these two.
The danger of its being over-modest is a very real one. Understandably, with the Trust as a new-corner in a field where there are already long-established bodies, it may feel that it is trespassing on their territories. It may well be very anxious not to offend, but it would be a great pity if it strangled itself at birth by its own tact, and I suggest that it should be given some status, as the National Trust or the Council for Industrial Design have achieved by their own exertions.
At the Lambeth Palace meeting there seemed to be some anxiety among all the other bodies working in this same field to have a parent body which could guide and help and, above all, co-ordinate their activities. At that meeting, the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Lewisham, South (Mr. H. Morrison), as a trustee of the Civic Trust, saw it in the rôle of a co-ordinating Minister rather than in that of an overlord. I believe that it would be wasteful if it sank its identit)in the identity of other bodies, and if the Civic Trust is to be the household word which I, for one, wish it to be, it can only achieve the necessary status if it constantly exerts its influence in its own name and if the inhabitants of our towns and villages see the practical results of its work in those places which they know best.
Secondly, the Trust should not be too shy in laying down standards of its own design; standards of good design. At that same meeting, there was a tendency——

Mr. Speaker: I am listening with great interest to what the hon. Member is saying, but I wonder whether he could help the House? I am wondering how this can be the concern of the Government. He must be aware, of course, of the fact that on the Adjournment Motion we can discuss only matters which involve a Ministerial responsibility. It is that about which I should like his assistance.

Mr. Nicolson: The work of the Civic Trust is, I respectfully suggest, Sir, very relevant to my hon. Friend's Ministry. I began by saying that, and I was going on to suggest the practical ways in which I think the Minister can help the Trust, and the means by which the Trust can help the Minister. Here we have two bodies; one official and one non-official, working in the same field, and I am trying, in this short debate, to point out how we can link the two.
I was saying that I hope that the Trust will not be too shy in laying down standards because it seems to me that there are some things which are wrong everywhere and always. In its programmes, and in its films, and so on, I hope that the Trust will be ruthless in its condemnation of what one might call the third-rate.
I now come to two practical suggestions upon which I should very much like my hon. Friend's comments, since they so closely affect the work of his own Department. Would he welcome, as Parliamentary Secretary, the institution of some centre in London, under the auspices of the Trust, corresponding to the Design Centre of the Council of Industrial Design, at which it could be possible for representatives of public and local authorities, as well as private individuals, to see examples of the best—and, perhaps, of the worst—that our architects and designers can supply?
If there were to be such a centre, it would be an advertisement for the Trust which it will badly need in its formative years, and there could be no suggestion of compulsion either by the Ministry or by a private body in the institution of an exhibition which would simply display to the public what can be done in typical circumstances such as are to be found up and down our land.
Secondly, would it not be to the advantage of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, in its attempts to spread widely appreciation of good and bad

building and town planning, if the Trust, as an unofficial body, were to select, at the invitation of the local inhabitants, one or two villages or small market towns up and down the country where the very best that our designers and architects could suggest might be on view? I am thinking of places like Christchurch, in Hampshire, and of Blandford, in Dorset, both of which I know well, which are not static towns but which are rapidly expanding and adapting themselves to a new age.
I am suggesting that it would be of advantage to everybody if, in only one place in the country, we had such a demonstration of, for example, the proper use of outdoor advertisements, of street signs, of roundabouts, of the proper concealment of wires by the telephone and electricity authorities, and of a housing estate laid out as part of a town instead of merely as an excrescence from it.
I come to the Minister's more particular responsibilities. The Civic Trust will become important only if the Minister says constantly that it is important. There are many examples—and this is mainly the reason why I asked for this debate—of Ministries co-operating very closely, to their mutual advantage, with private bodies. I need only mention the R.S.P.C.A. and the N.S.P.C.C. The Civic Trust, in my view, is a society, though not yet Royal, for the prevention of ugliness, and if it is to aid the Government it must be aided by the Government.
There are three positive ways in which the aid could be given. The first is if the Ministry were to urge consultation between the Civic Trust and other Ministries, and particularly the boards of the nationalised industries. These Ministries and boards, in combination, are virtually the patrons of our civic design. They have it in their powers to make or mar the appearance of the countryside, and all too often they have marred it. If there could be consultation between the Trust and those responsible on those official bodies, some improvement could be expected.
Secondly, could the Minister urge local authorities to consult the experts whom the Trust would make available to them on the appearance of their localities? Could he not suggest, by any means that he could devise, that there is nothing


derogatory to civic pride in calling in the advice of the person who has spent his whole life in making judgments on design, whether it is a question of a new plan for a whole town, or the pattern of a street which might, by slight modifications, be made a pleasure instead of an eyesore? Surely there is room for the outside adviser whom the Trust would be most well suited to supply.
Finally, there is the question of the area planning boards who operate directly under the Ministry. It is not always that the officials and the members of those bodies are those who can lay claim to any special training in the development of their localities, yet these questions are a matter for a certain amount of expertise. The design of a lamp-post or of the town hall demands that trained visual sense which the local councillors cannot always provide.
I suggest to my hon. Friend that he should urge the local planning committees to co-opt some outside members to serve upon them. They may be people who live in the district and who are known to have a special interest in the visual appearance of the country or they may be experts who come from outside, experts provided by the Civic Trust itself who would be acceptable to the local people as expert advisers.
When I look around at my familiar neighbourhood I am sometimes filled with despair at the accretions of the last ten or twenty years. I sometimes wonder whether the mistakes which have been made last year will lead us not to repeat the same mistakes this year or next. A new stimulus is required if the public taste is not to be atrophied by familiarity with the second-rate. The Civic Trust can provide that stimulus and I ask my hon. Friend not only to praise it but to use it.

11.27 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. R. Bevins): I am sure that the House is grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for East Bournemouth and Christchurch (Mr. N. Nicolson)for drawing our attention to the formation and the prospective activities of the Civic Trust. Naturally, my right hon. Friend welcomes any help at all in the fight against ugliness in our country whose

beauty, of course, we all love. We welcome, of course, the formation of the Trust itself. We recognise what is being done already by voluntary bodies and it is a good thing that we should now be discussing the newest of all these voluntary organisations.
My hon. Friend, as I understood him, has rather suggested that in this context the principal function of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government is the rather negative one of forestalling bad design. He will, I am sure, realise that our work also has its positive side—for example, through the development corporations in the duty of building new towns—and, of course, it is equally true to say that the local authorities have very considerable scope for constructive work in the redevelopment of blitzed or blighted central areas and in the building of new schools and new housing estates.
A great deal of this work is of a very high standard indeed and has been universally praised. Nevertheless, it is true that the work of the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and of the local authorities is very largely preventive and negative in character, and while we should not under-rate what we are doing to thwart ugly or unsuitable development, my right hon. Friend would certainly not claim for a moment that we are in a position to cover the whole field. We certainly agree that there is plenty of room for the contribution of voluntary bodies which can be vigilant on these questions of public amenity.
think, however, that I ought to single out one body in this sphere, that is neither a voluntary nor a self-constituted organisation, and that was set up years ago under Royal Warrant, the Royal Fine Art Commission. My hon. Friend has made one or two rather fleeting allusions to the activities of the Commission. It is important that we should be clear that the Royal Fine Art Commission is charged by Royal warrant with a duty of inquiring into such questions of public amenity or artistic importance as may be put to it by any of the Departments of State, and giving advice on similar questions when asked to do so by public or quasi-public bodies.
The Commission is charged, also, with the duty of calling the attention of Departments to any project or development


which, in its view, may seem to affect amenities of a national or public character. The House will be familiar, from the Reports of the Commission, with the wide range of activities in which these terms of reference involve the distinguished gentlemen who are members of the Commission. My right hon. Friend regards it as important that, in any discussion of this general topic of public amenity, we should bear in mind the duties which are entrusted to the Commission.
There are, however, as my hon. Friend said, other organisations which take a very keen interest in questions of amenity. The Civic Trust is the latest such organisation to be formed, and, as I understand what my hon. Friend has said, the Trust has, I think very wisely, decided that, so far as possible, it should avoid duplicating work which is already being effectively done by professional or other amenity societies, and will, where it is appropriate, co-operate with those other bodies.
This leads to the other question posed by my hon. Friend, namely what is the particular contribution which the Civic Trust, as the newcomer, can make? Obviously, it is not for me to suggest how a voluntary body of this kind should do its work, but I may, perhaps, suggest that the most valuable function it can perform lies in the education of public opinion, in stimulating interest in the appearance of our towns and villages, and encouraging a better appreciation of high standards of architecture in civic planning.
As my hon. Friend knows, a great deal of the development in progress in the country is the concern of private people as distinct from public bodies, local authorities, Government Departments, and the like, and, in the long run, the standard of that development, that is, the work done by private individuals and interests, will depend on the extent of public interest and on the standard of public taste. Clearly, the greater the interest taken in these questions and the more enlightened that interest is, the greater will be the chance of getting well-designed and well-sited buildings, and preserving all that is best in our national heritage.
I was, therefore, very interested, as indeed, would my right hon. Friend have been, I know, to hear the suggestions which my hon. Friend made as to how the Trust might embark upon the further education of public opinion. It is not, I think, for me or, indeed, for the House, to tell the Trust how it should proceed, but I have no doubt that the Trust will consider with the utmost care the suggestions put forward by my hon. Friend. These are early days in the life of the Trust. It would be quite wrong for me at this stage to attempt a forecast as to how the Trust will work or how we might be able to co-operate with it in achieving our common ends.
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising this topic tonight. My right hon. Friend asks me to say that he will certainly watch the progress of the Trust with the closest interest and attention.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-five minutes to Twelve o'clock.